Redevelopment: An Intervention

A series of signs in the city of Vancouver, 1988
Re-presented in an exhibition at grunt gallery, Vancouver, 1989

Walter appropriated phrases from Harlequin Romance noves, painted them on wood panels and added them to the bottom of twenty permit application signs during the development boom of the late-1980s in Vancouver. Using a similar font and form as these painted signs, her footnotes were able to remain in place, for months in some cases. They were visually discrete but politically pointed at a city caught in a race for world-case status.

​This intervention exposes the nature of redevelopment for its dominance and machismo. It questions the right to housing and our willingness to be spirited away to the Big House by the development suitor and a compliant city council.
​(excerpt from exhibition brochure by Glenn Alteen)

This piece was recently represented in the exhibition A View From Here at Simon Fraser University Art Galleries 2021-22