Art in Vancouver that Makes you Ponder

• Author: WantsToTravelMore
• Accommodation: Vancouver Accommodations

At Thurlow and West Georgia, connected to the Shangri-La skyscraper mixed-use Vancouver hotel thing, is a spot where the Vancouver Art Gallery has space for outdoor displays.

This one shown is called “Your Kingdom to Command.” I took pictures of the plaques that explain this work. Regardless of that information and simply looking at it, the environmental advocacy imagery is pretty in-your-face. One of the stumps has life (the term nurse log applies) and the other doesn’t. The living stump is trying to send life to the more dead-looking stump.

The drawings on the back wall are all related to the various fossilized micro organisms that are present in material used for fossil fuels. That part makes you think. If you could talk to these creatures, I bet they would not want to be used to wreck the environment.

However, is it art? My problem is that the paintings on the background are flat and seem almost amateurish. There’s no sense of the entity being represented. When you see real ancient fossils at museums (e.g. Royal Tyrrell in Alberta) there’s a beauty in the real thing that’s just not captured.

However, the work of art stops people and they take pictures and maybe they ponder what the impact is of our consumer nature. In other words, you don’t have to like this piece to have it make you think.