Lloyd Dykk's National Newspaper Award winning columns
$1.49 day no bargain for Artropolis wares
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, Oct. 30 1993
As I wandered around two floors of art for three hours at what used to be the Woodward's store on Hastings and is for now the home of Artropolis, a mocking sound chirped out at regular intervals, ``Dollar-forty-nine day -- Wood-ward's!''
After a time it became annoying â a throw-back to those 1950s radio choirs, still chirping out dead jingles with that ghastly '50s cheer, but now . . . ironically.
In this hip atmosphere of superior but mostly unarrived '90s artists, it was like getting one of those tiresomely clever post-modern postcards in the mail â an Electrolux housewife in her perky hairdo and frilly party frock beaming radiantly over the ironing board without breaking a sweat as the speech balloon offers a witheringly modern sarcasm.
Actually, themes are far from cheerful or even ironic at Artropolis, they're deploring: Sexual abuse, the homeless, diseases, the environment, the cityscape, feminism, gay rights, and all those things that should be the direct concern of politicians, not artists, except indirectly. Their causes should be bigger, more mysterious.