Bill Fontana often focuses on architectural monuments and other engineering feats; in this case our understanding of an iconic bridge has been descontructed - San Francisco’s Golden Gate. Placing a camera accompanied by sophisticated, sound-capturing devices under the car deck of the Bridge, the artist extracts what he terms a “sound vision”. This installation of the work features a single-channel video installed in a long, tapering room. Horizontal light patterns pass along the underside of the bridge as cars pass over expansion joints: while the sound of the expansion joints and the haunting quality of fog horns in the bay creates a work of hypnotic power.

Bill Fontana is known internationally for pioneering experiments, over 40 years, in sound art. His work is presented worldwide. Among other honours he is the recent recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN prize. His practice is concerned with acoustic memory, the transformation of the visible by the invisible, the relationship of the speed of sound to the speed of light, and the deconstruction of our perception of time. He uses the urban environment as a living source of musical information.

Bill Fontana

Acoustical Visions of the Golden Gate Bridge

2012

A two channel video installation situates the viewer between two opposing video screens in a confined, dark space. The viewer is first confronted with a man driving, eyes open. On the opposing screen the same man drives; eyes closed. The work is shot at night : red and green lights bathing his face are cinematic, conjuring night driving and perhaps connotations of ’stop’ and ‘go’. The audio is low and hypnotic; the sound of the driving car, and the iterative, dopler effect of passing objects. Doherty’s depictions of urban life share the distanced quality and colour palette found in the empty spaces of an Edward Hopper painting. Shot on a the West-Link twin bridges spanning 42 meters above the River Liffey, the bridge can perhaps be understood as a potential link between desperately divided communities.

Willie Doherty first came to prominence in the 1980s with work that explored the complexities of living in a divided community. Much of his work reveals undercurrents of fear, oppression and uncertainty that for many was a daily experience of life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Doherty has twice been shortlisted for the Turner Prize and represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. His work is presented and collected worldwide.

Willie Doherty

Drive

2003)

Stairwell was shot inside a hidden stairwell located within the Burrard Bridge. The work documents a forgotten space, boarded up shortly after it opened in 1932. Shot on a vertical track running the height of the stairwell, the work now unravels its 62-foot helical architecture onto the horizontal plane of the gallery wall. The dollying camera moves back and forth across the length of the gallery, the projector pulls the image along with it. Drifting between surveillance and cinema, the camera inscribes a repetitive and revelatory process of examination and exploration; capturing fleeting moments of narrative left on the walls; revealing traces of those who left their marks after its permanent closure.

Based in Vancouver, Scott Billings + Josh Hite have presented their work in North America and internationally. Billlings focusses on issues of cinematic spectatorship + the unconscious and the ways in which the apparatus itself reveals the mechanisms of causality. Hite’s practice is concerned with tactics for documentation and human movement through urban spaces. Stairwell is the result of a multi-year project.

Scott Billings + Josh Hite

Stairwell

2016

The artists worked with:

Adam Carree

Alison Denham

Arash Khakpour

Aryo Khakpour

Bill O’Connell

Billy Marchenski

Brady Marks

Cathy Falkner

Colin Griffiths

Chris Mills

Dan Hepler

Dan Misri

Dave Eriksen

Dave Spaargaren

Dennis Rosenfeld

Dylan Cooper

Elissa Hanson

Eric Spika

Flick Harrison

Gerard McDonald

Iman Emadian

Ira Jordison

Ivana Horacek

J Kim

Jaime Keegan

Jerry Porter

Jess Wilkie

Jodie Martinson

Joyce Yee

Justine Chambers

Kristen Roos

Kristin Truman

Laura Avery

Leah Pires

Lexi Vajda

Lorna Porter

Marketa Van den Elzen

Matt Stacey

Matthew Richards

Molly Macdonald

Nancy Tam

Nick Lakowski

Peter Courtemanche

Peter Van den Elzen

Richard Truman

Riley Breen

Rik Rohee

Rob Symmers

Ryan Peter

Sean Arden Shen Lin

Simon Hammond

Teah Van den Elzen

Will Aballe

Zidra Hammond



Thank You

Fia Cooper

Gordon Price

M. Simon Levin

Arts Umbrella

Camera Rentals Vancouver

Flying Wedge Pizza

Mark Callow Insurance

Lynx Print

Vancouver Archives

Vancouver City Engineers - Peter Judd, Neal Carley, Dane Doleman, Marco Biagini, Enrico Santamaria

Vancouver Film School and Ted Jones

Vancouver Historical Society and Scott Anderson

Vancouver Public Art Program and Bryan Newson