Hamilton Lands, Richmond BC
2020
Commissioned by Oris Consulting

koyo-te is an enigmatic assemblage of elements informed by the landscape and cultural history of the site: the wildlife of the bog, centuries of food gathering and farming, a memory of the Japanese community.

Weathered “wooden” crates, for storing cranberries, become a formal plinth: set atop is a bronze coyote, a familiar figure who has just leapt up onto the plinth. The animal is at home here, in this neighbourhood, moving between the lush landscape of the bog and the river, almost invisibly interwoven with our lives. Together crates and coyote also recall formal Japanese statuary of foxes (kitsune) and are a quiet reference to the former community. Coyote and kitsune have lived with man for a long time, moving between wilderness and farmland. Both coyote and kitsune have become part of myth, shape-shifting from animal to human, and suggesting adaptability and transformation.

koyo-te refers to the archetypal and mythical landscape of memory and identity, to how we understand, interpret, re-interpret the world around us.