The case of the vanishing sculpture

Local sculptor, performance artist, and founding member of Main Street’s Drift arts festival Varouj Gumuchian had a nasty surprise a couple of weeks ago, compliments of the City of Vancouver. Gumuchian had built a large temporary sculpture in the triangular green space at Main Street and West 18th Avenue, as a set for his contribution to the Drift: a dual-person performance called Everyday Opera. When Gumuchian went to check on the structure—a mix of silver-painted two-by-twos, scaffolding, mesh, and various found objects—the day before the September 28 performance, he discovered that it had vanished overnight. “I was totally pissed,” he recalled to the Straight.

It turns out the artist had misunderstood municipal procedures required to set up such an object on public property and believed that informal conversations with park-board representatives, along with signs he’d attached to the work labelling it as part of the Drift (which runs until Sunday [October 15]—see www.thedrift.ca/), were enough. But a neighbour phoned in a complaint to the city, and a truck from Sanitation Operations swooped in and hauled the unapproved artwork to the dump.

“They picked it up because they received a report of abandoned garbage and litter,” said Paul Heraty of the city’s communications department. Heraty said that the correct procedure for putting up any piece of public art, however temporary, involves contacting city hall’s Office of Cultural Affairs for an engineer’s review.