Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Ovoidism

LARWILL PARK SITE INAUGURAL PROJECTS

The Vancouver Art Gallery has launched an ongoing series of public art projects that will take place at the Larwill Park site–the future location of the new Vancouver Art Gallery. The location holds a unique place in the history of Vancouver—as a parade ground, fairground and sports field, a space for celebration and for protest, and more recently, as a bus depot and parking lot.

 

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun is a renowned Vancouver-based artist of Coast Salish and Okanagan descent who has produced a public art installation on the future site of the Vancouver Art Gallery where a group of brilliantly coloured ovoid sculptures mark the location.

The ovoid is a rounded oval-rectangular shape that is a key design element unique to Northwest Coast art. This shape is an essential building block from which movements flow or design patterns emanate to form a figure. In traditional Northwest Coast design, ovoids often represent joints (shoulder, hip, wing, pectoral fin), as well as eye sockets and teeth. Traditionally, the ovoid is never depicted as an entity unto itself, but rather an element of a larger design or figure.

Yuxweluptun’s use of the ovoid, rather than following traditional iconography, extricates the form in order to speak to land claims, the history of colonization, Aboriginal rights and self-government, environmentalism and Native philosophy. In this context Yuxweluptun’s ovoids speak to the past and the present uses of the Larwill Park site, marking that place with a watchful eye, and reminding us as we pass by and through the site that we live, work and interact on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish people.