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Contemporary Art Gallery

555 Nelson Street
Vancouver, Canada
Open from Tuesday to
Sunday 12 pm → 6 pm

Admission always free
ArchiveExhibition
1 Jan 19until31 Dec 19

How far do you travel?

Diyan Achjadi, Patrick Cruz, Rolande Souliere, Erdem Taşdelen, Anna Torma

Offsite on selected TransLink B-Line buses

A graphic pattern made up of a purple, blue and green geometric background with various illustrations of buildings, swirling clouds, imaginary birds and plants superimposed on top.

Diyan Achjadi, NonSerie (In Commute) (detail), 2017-18. Courtesy the artist.

Throughout 2019, the Contemporary Art Gallery is producing a major public art initiative in partnership with TransLink, Metro Vancouver’s transportation authority. Five Canadian artists — Diyan Achjadi, Patrick Cruz, Rolande Souliere, Erdem Taşdelen and Anna Torma — were commissioned to graphically wrap the exterior of a series of articulated buses traveling on major routes throughout Vancouver. The nature of this project — public transit vehicles enveloped by visual imagery and traversing the space of the city — offers a lyrical opportunity to explore connections between images, meaning and movement. Buses and trains are not the only transit systems that we navigate in our everyday lives: visual images constantly transport ideas and meaning from one place to another. They link and organize histories, spaces and identities. They connect us with others. The English word commute is derived from the Latin commutare, which means to change or transform. Each of the five artists featured in this project has an artistic practice that is deeply attentive to the commute of visual language across time and space. This project asks “how far do you travel?”, a question that could well be posed to each rider on the bus, but also to the graphic imagery that Achjadi, Cruz, Souliere, Taşdelen and Torma use to interrogate how and why images move and communicate through time and place.

Curated by Kimberly Phillips, with assistance from Julia Lamare

This project is produced in partnership with TransLink.

An image of the exterior of a transit bus that is wrapped in a patterned vinyl. The vinyl pattern is made up of a purple and blue geometric background with various illustrations superimposed on top.
An image of the exterior of a transit bus that is wrapped in a patterned vinyl. The vinyl pattern is made up of a plain pink background with abstract illustrations of various forms and shapes.
An image of the exterior of a transit bus wrapped in a patterned vinyl. The imagery on the vinyl resembles blueprint-like geometric shapes, composed of thin white lines on a dark blue background.
An image of the exterior of a transit bus that is wrapped in a patterned vinyl. The vinyl pattern is made up black pictographic imagery on a white background.
An image of the exterior of a transit bus wrapped in patterned vinyl. The pattern is composed of road work caution tape, with arrow-like shapes alternating from yellow and black to red and white.

Documents

Program guidepdf1mb

Talks & Events

A graphic pattern made up of a purple, blue and green geometric background with various illustrations of buildings, swirling clouds, imaginary birds and plants superimposed on top.Event · OffsiteTalkDiyan Achjadi
3 Feb 19·3:00 PMuntil4:00 PM
Exterior image of the Yaletown-Roundhouse station façade covered in a pattern of vinyl rhombus and triangle shapes. Each shape contains patterns of alternating red, white, black and yellow rhombuses. Event · OffsiteTalkRolande Souliere
7 Apr 19·3:00 PM
A detail of Erdem Taşdelen's design. On a dark blue background, white lines draw mathematical graphs and shapes. Event · OffsiteReading Erdem Taşdelen reads from The Characters aboard the moving bus
14 Apr 19·3:00 PM
An image of the exterior of a transit bus that is wrapped in a patterned vinyl. The vinyl pattern is made up black pictographic imagery on a white background. Event · OffsiteSound Performance Patrick Cruz aboard the moving bus
16 Jun 19·3:00 PM

Publications & Editions

EditionDiyan Achjadi$150.00
A graphic pattern made up of a purple, blue and green geometric background with various illustrations of buildings, swirling clouds, imaginary birds and plants superimposed on top.
An image of the exterior of a transit bus that is wrapped in a patterned vinyl. The vinyl pattern is made up of a purple and blue geometric background with various illustrations superimposed on top.
An image of the exterior of a transit bus that is wrapped in a patterned vinyl. The vinyl pattern is made up of a plain pink background with abstract illustrations of various forms and shapes.
An image of the exterior of a transit bus wrapped in a patterned vinyl. The imagery on the vinyl resembles blueprint-like geometric shapes, composed of thin white lines on a dark blue background.
An image of the exterior of a transit bus that is wrapped in a patterned vinyl. The vinyl pattern is made up black pictographic imagery on a white background.
An image of the exterior of a transit bus wrapped in patterned vinyl. The pattern is composed of road work caution tape, with arrow-like shapes alternating from yellow and black to red and white.