A Visionary’s Vision: The Evolution of a Growing Art Program

Our owners and developers, Westbank, have now installed 30 pieces of major public art and the evolution of their art practice has mounted from featuring good local artists, to now working with a dozen of the top artists in the world today. The art projects they do lead the design of the building, rather than follow and they get very involved with the artists. Their plan is to keep adding a number of pieces every year.

Ian Wallace

Ian Wallace is a celebrated artist and teacher, best known as a founding member of what has come to be recognized as the Vancouver school of photoconceptualism. In 2012, the Vancouver Art Gallery presented a career retrospective, “Ian Wallace: At the Intersection of Painting and Photography.”

Forest Screen

A photograph of North Vancouver’s majestic rainforest has been brought to life on the perforated steel screen that graces the south western facade of the hotel.

Liam Gillick

Liam Gillick was born in 1964 in Aylesbury, UK. He attended Goldsmiths College in London between 1984 and 1987 and has been teaching at Columbia University in New York since 1997. He lives and works in New York and London.

Lying on top of a building the clouds looked no nearer than when I was lying on the street.

This passage, in UK artist Liam Gillick’s signature choice of Helvetica bold, occupies floors five through 22 at the Fairmont Pacific Rim.

16

16.480 is a dramatic installation of 480 glass 16’s supported by a set of sitespecific, tree-like minarets.

The Teak Bridge, framed with waterfalls on each side, flanks the main hotel entrance and beckons guests to enter. Its colourful glass-art reeds and plants drift in the water, connecting Fairmont Pacific Rim to nature.

Even 50 years on, the XKE is still regarded by many car enthusiasts as the most beautiful production car ever made.

Adad Hannah

Adad Hannah was born in New York in 1971, spent his childhood in Israel and England, and moved to Vancouver in the early 1980’s. He lives and works between Montreal and Vancouver.

Handcrafted in Italy by piano maker Paolo Fazioli, the custom-made piano holds pride-of-place in the hotel’s lobby lounge and features a unique three-dimensional design under the lid.

Zhang Huan is one of today’s leading contemporary artists. His submission sculptural proposal depicted a flock of fluttering birds taking flight from a rooted tree trunk.

Smooth “book matching style” marble flows through the airy hotel lobby. The Italian Bianco Statuario Marble is sent to China, where the book matching process takes place.