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Location: Station Square Plaza, 
Vancouver, British Columbia

Material: Cast Aluminum, Scenic Paint, Industrial Coatings

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Shopping malls are a “dream-world”. Like their predecessors, the shopping arcades and department stores of the 19th century, they represent an idealized city, where streets are always lit, clean, and where everything is readily available. They were and are the promenade space, a place of visual enjoyment and entertainment. Cordials are a series of sculptures that transport us back to the moment in time in which the shopping mall came into existence. Based on old-fashioned Victorian illustrations, they uncover a parallel universe in which the present-day co-exists with the past, producing a dreamlike effect through the dislocation of time and space. Not unlike surrealist collage, the artwork heightens the theatricality of the site, which resembles a stage set, setting in motion encounters between a series of strange objects that have nothing to link them. The sculptures will act out before passers-by, a fantastic drama involving gastronomical delights, fashionable clothing, elegantly dressed dandies and the like, turning the empty space at Station Square’s busy south entrance into a playhouse. Modeled to resemble traditional Monopoly game tokens, they further reinforce the playful and game-like quality of the work.

 

Photography by Rachel Topham and Carvel Creative 

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Project Details

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Myfanwy MacLeod engaged Carvel to provide a turn-key solution to this project. Four in-house digital artists combined their efforts to sculpt five figures in ZBrush, later providing a more detailed design in Solidworks to output engineer-sealed drawings. Carvel then combined our CNC technology with old-world sculpting to produce the patterns, collaborating with a foundry to produce the pieces in cast aluminum. After the application of several luxurious coats of paint and clear to give these pieces their final patina, Carvel installed them in their final resting place in the busy plaza of Village Square.

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