Christos Dikeakos

Countering the postcard image of Lotus Land that has come to characterize the public representation of Vancouver, Christos Dikeakos has been photographing anonymous and mundane views of the city for more than twenty-five years. In this new body of work, Sites & Place Names, Dikeakos challenges our understanding of the history of Vancouver.

Pairing carefully selected, colour panoramas of present-day Vancouver with sheets of glass sandblasted with the Salish names of sites that once existed there, Christos Dikeakos unveils Vancouver's overlapping histories. He reminds us that there is a deeper history to Vancouver which predates European settlement and continues to the present day. Dikeakos leaves us with a new way of looking at, and understanding, such familiar places as Stanley Park, the Burrard Street bridge and the North Shore.

Sites & Place Names was motivated by the artist's curiosity about the origins of his adopted neighbourhood of Kitsilano, where he first moved as a Greek immigrant youth. The exhibition was deliberately timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Captain Vancouver to what is now the City of Vancouver.

Christos Dikeakos is well known to the Vancouver art community. He has served on the boards of a number of artist-run centres in the city, and is currently the head of the Art Acquisitions Committee at the Vancouver Art Gallery. A major retrospective of his work was mounted at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1986.

Public programming for Sites & Place Names is supported by Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, and promotion is supported by U.TV, Vancouver.