VANCOUVER.- Westbank announces the unveiling of Spinning Chandelier (2019) by renowned Abbotsford-born artist Rodney Graham.

Graham’s Spinning Chandelier is a kinetic sculpture in the form of a monumental 7.8 x 4.3 metre (25.5’ x 14’) faux-crystal chandelier. It has been installed under the Granville Street Bridge in the cathedral-like space of the bridge’s northern viaduct, directly over Beach Avenue.

Spinning Chandelier is inspired by Graham’s 2005 35mm film installation Torqued Chandelier Release, which depicts an 18th century crystal chandelier after it is wound up on a rope and released.

Exceptional in both its innovative engineering and artistic ambition, Spinning Chandelier takes the subject of Graham’s film and makes it physically manifest. Weighing over 7500 pounds, it is constructed of stainless steel, LED lamps and over 600 polyurethane “crystals”, and has taken over three years to design and manufacture by Walla Walla Foundry, North America’s leading producer of public artwork.

Spinning Chandelier will descend twice a day at a fixed time, releasing and spinning rapidly before ascending back to its starting point. These dramatic daily performances are set to transform the unused underbelly of the Granville Bridge, adding an indelible new feature to Vancouver’s civic landscape while introducing a provocative new concept for public artwork globally.

Vancouver-based Graham is one of the city’s most internationally acclaimed visual artists. His multidisciplinary practice spans painting, photography, performance, music and film and he is widely known for his ongoing series of photographs depicting inverted trees. Over his career, Graham has been included in the world’s most prestigious exhibitions including Documenta IX and the 1997 Venice Biennale, where he represented Canada with his seminal film work Vexation Island. Graham has had major retrospectives in the past year at The Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany, and his work is in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In 2011 Graham was the recipient of the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, and in 2016 he was named an officer of the Order of Canada.