East Vancouver artist Reece Terris's Bridge pops up at Audain Art Museum, to October 17
The Whistler museum’s micro-exhibition illustrates how the four-storey-tall installation was less about the structure itself and more about the space in between
Reece Terris: Like a Bridge. Photo via Audain Art Museum
Reece Terris: Like a Bridge is a micro-exhibition at Audain Art Museum, September 9 to October 17.
HERE’S SOMETHING YOU don’t see every day: a striking wooden bridge linking an East Van home to the one next door. That’s exactly what artist Reece Terris created in 2006, the framed arch sculpture connecting his place to his neighbour’s on McSpadden Avenue.
Thirty-six feet off the ground and made of 2 x 4 lumber with rope handrails, the 37-foot long installation connects Terris’s upper balcony with the second-floor deck of his next-door neighbour’s.
There was much more to the structure than a practical passage beautiful in form, as a new micro-exhibition at Audain Art Museum illustrates.
The bridge’s construction incorporated principles developed by Sechet’s Frank Petersohn, who studied the Rainbow Bridge depicted in a historically significant scroll Along the River During the Qingming Festival by the Song Dynasty painter Zhang Zeduan (1085-1145). The panoramic painting captures a bustling scene, with the bridge across a river being the focal point, and speaks to social circumstances of the era.
By walking across Terris’s Bridge, people’s private spaces are exposed.
“It tells you something about your neighbourhood,” Reece said in a statement. “You see that your neighbours essentially have the same things that you do though they all made their decisions separately,”
A subtle critique of social and civic governing structures, the installation came to symbolize communication and connection. It was, as Terris said, “less about the bridge, but more about the space in between. The houses were so close to each other and by connecting them in the air, that space in between highlighted the ideology of the property line and real estate values.”
While the work was in progress, neighbours and passersby became more and more curious, the site becoming a community hub. Many crossed over the bridge, with it being accessible 24 hours a day for six weeks.
A graduate from the School of Contemporary Art at Simon Fraser University, Terris is a mixed-media, installation, and performance artist who has exhibited at home and abroad, including at Vancouver Art Gallery, the Kunst Palais Liechtenstein, and Tate Modern, London, among other places.
The Audain Art Museum’s micro-exhibitions are pop-up shows that happen throughout the year and feature historical and contemporary art.
For more information, see Audain Art Museum.
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