DEADHEAD | Cedric Bomford

Dead­head is a large-scale sculp­tural instal­la­tion mounted to a barge and towed by tug to dif­fer­ent loca­tions along Vancouver’s water­ways. Cre­ated by alumnus Cedric Bom­ford ('03), in col­lab­o­ra­tion with his father Jim Bom­ford (retired engi­neer), and brother Nathan Bom­ford (artist/builder), the sculp­ture is con­structed pri­mar­ily from sal­vaged mate­ri­als, with some sec­tions wrapped in pho­to­graphic murals.

A curi­ous marine out­post, Deadhead’s enig­matic spaces are designed for pub­lic access. This float­ing art­work begins its life on the water with sum­mer moor­age in Her­itage Har­bour at the Van­cou­ver Mar­itime Museum from June 14 to Sep­tem­ber 2, 2014. For sched­uled pub­lic events, vis­i­tors will be fer­ried from the Museum dock to the barge so they can expe­ri­ence and explore the structure.

Deadhead’s life on the water is the cul­mi­na­tion of a num­ber of phases of devel­op­ment that unfolded over a three-year period. The art­work began in 2011 with research trips up the east coast of Van­cou­ver Island, Mal­colm Island and Alert Bay. The Bom­ford team’s sculp­tural vocab­u­lary was informed by the ver­nac­u­lar and pro­vi­sional archi­tec­tural expres­sions found in the resource camps and the sit­u­a­tions of the rural com­mu­ni­ties they vis­ited. Many of these local cul­tures evolved around fron­tier val­ues of indi­vid­u­al­ism and inno­va­tion inspir­ing myths and leg­ends about dreams being real­ized and selves rein­vented. For the Bom­fords there were impor­tant links to be made between utopian social exper­i­ments and the envi­ron­men­tal par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of the west coast rain forest.

Dead­head is curated by Bar­bara Cole and is the cul­mi­nat­ing project of When the Hosts Come Home, a 3-part series fea­tur­ing artist teams that use recy­cled and repur­posed mate­ri­als to inves­ti­gate issues of sus­tain­abil­ity in rela­tion to Vancouver’s evolv­ing urbanity.