COLOURFUL STREET PARTY
Mural Festival celebrates art in urban spaces
Vancouver Mural Festival executive director David Vertesi laughs when questioned about the ever-expanding nature of the event. Vertesi and the crack team at Create Vancouver Society, the registered non-profit behind the event, have built the largest publicart exhibition in the city.
Their gallery space is all around us in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood and elsewhere, and contributes to a reinterpretation of what art in urban space can be.
The festival website lists 23 new artists from around the globe who will create works at the third annual event. Along with their new concrete canvases, there will be other new local murals developed in partnership with the Downtown Eastside Centre for the Arts, Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House, THRIVE Art Studio and Burrard Arts Foundation. In total, 30 new murals are planned.
A pre-festival Strathcona Street Party on June 23 heralded the event and got the buzz building.
The free, massive Mount Pleasant Street party on Aug. 11, headlined by former Vancouverite Hannah Georgas, along with the Belle Game, Schwey and Shamik, is expected to draw in excess of 125,000. Then the revelry continues with The Park Show, a ticketed concert at Jonathan Rodgers Park presented in partnership with Live Nation Canada, headlined by A Tribe Called Red. Tickets from $30 are on sale at livenation.com and the festival website, as well as at Red Cat Records.
“It’s been a crazy process, which I had an inkling could go this way, but every year more people keep coming up wanting to be involved,” said Vertesi. “This is testament to the hunger in Vancouver for this kind of thing. Activating public space is something people are really passionate about.”
The City of Vancouver, Mount Pleasant BIA, Canadian Heritage and the province of British Columbia all support Create Vancouver Society. Having this many players involved means that the mural festival is unlikely to fall prey to any changes in levels of government as has befallen past initiatives to liven up public spaces.
“It was somewhat serendipitous when we first came together that the city was wanting to do something along these lines, but we’ve really worked really hard to diversify where our income is coming from since then to weather any storms,” he said. “The new Creative City strategy is different and there is going to be a new government, even if it’s the same party, it’s all new. The work we’ve done with multiple parties has always been unanimously supported and our goal is to advocate for art and culture through some event-based activism.”
In other words, it shouldn’t matter who is steering the ship next. This event is sticking around. Live Nation Canada’s festival promoter, Ryan Balaski, said getting involved with the mural fest was a no-brainer as the company has its offices in Mount Pleasant.
“Me and other people in the office had always wanted to do some kind of community-based, blockparty-style event,” said Balaski. “Talking to Mural Fest spawned this whole thing instead, which led to me talking to the park board to open up Jonathan Rodgers Park for its first-ever event like this.”
Located at 110 West Seventh Ave., the park is an irresistible patch of green amid the busy creative-sector hub that has sprung up in Mount Pleasant. It’s also a perfect spot to present a live event as it’s not surrounded by the condo towers that have become so synonymous with noise complaints that curb civic enjoyment. Balaski said everyone was so excited about the idea of the concert with A Tribe Called Red, Charlotte Day Wilson and guests TBA.
“Being tied in with Mural Fest, which is such a cool event for Vancouver, and already has its street party, really worked in our favour,” he said. “Plus, we’ve got a family deal with 12-and-unders free, and for this day and age, affordable pricing for some great Canadian artists in the park.”
Balaski’s booking for the Park Show reflects the various Indigenous initiatives taken by the VMF. In 2017, it started the Indigenous Youth Mural Arts Program with the idea of giving Coast Salish and other Indigenous people living in Vancouver a chance to tell their stories.
This year, such luminaries as Sto:lo/St’at'imc artist Ronnie Dean Harris (a.k.a. Ostwelve) and Tsleil-Waututh artist Zachary George are providing murals, among others. Musqueam master weaver, artist and knowledge keeper Debra Sparrow is also doing a special project working with other artists to incorporate the visual language of eons-old traditions that she and a few other families have kept alive.
“This whole notion of visual sovereignty and how it relates to Indigenous artists where they reside is being addressed through a lot of initiatives and community interaction,” said Vertesi.
“A few years ago, Mount Pleasant had little or no Indigenous art visibility and now it’s a hot spot for it. It’s really amazing, for residents both Indigenous and nonIndigenous, to be able to recognize that this art is beautiful and also address the bigger realization of where we live and the re-Indigenization of public space.”
This is the activism that VMF is talking about, and it extends into the annual curation of who comes to paint our city walls. Vertesi said he’s beside himself with some of the artists the event has secured.
“One of the most exciting ones on the international side, for me, is Faith XLVII, an L.A.-based artist from South Africa and one of the biggest names in the world, who has travelled everywhere and has a really distinct style,” he said. “It’s taken us over two years to finally get her here and it’s one off the bucket list.
“Locally, Danielle Krysa, the Jealous Curator, has this awesome art blog and is doing some really neat street art, and this series with Debra Sparrow that we started last year with painting two of the pillars of the Granville Street Bridge is going to bring a major piece to Mount Pleasant.”
At the time, Vertesi was still working on securing the permits and so forth around this coming work and wouldn’t speak further. You get the sense that one of the challenges facing the VMF is running out of space, but Vertesi said he’s always seeing empty walls for the taking.
“Everyone on this team is so dedicated to Vancouver and to creating a situation where artists can work together with all these levels of government, builders and developers to inject local art into public space and truly diversify it,” he said.
“I feel like there has been this tendency in the past to see diversity as one mural of people of different races holding hands together. We want totally different artists from all kinds of communities to do totally different art embracing all the stories.”
While the VMF does fit into the Canadian obsession for seasonal festivals, it has the benefit of existing past the festival’s dates. Vertesi said that was always the idea and that VMF always encompassed more than the murals and the music.
“It introduces people to amazing local and international artists, but also all sorts of other arts and culture taking place in the city,” he said.
“So if you wander into this cool space run by some awesome people or organization to check something out, that recognition that it’s there all year to experience remains.”
This matters to Vertesi in regards to his other life. As a member of local band Hey! Ocean and a solo recording artist, he knows the benefits of people recognizing and supporting their local arts.
It introduces people to amazing local and international artists, but also all sorts of other arts and culture taking place in the city.