Every year, discarded materials are dredged out of rivers and streams around the world. These materials accumulate and leave a negative impact on the water quality and ultimately the plant and wildlife, where metal, plastics, and other unnatural materials leach toxins into the water system. The new “mutant fish” art installation in Gates Park speaks to the ongoing litter problem in the lower Coquitlam River watershed, which pollutes the river and upsets the natural, ecological balance. This temporary installation is assembled from materials recovered from a river clean-up initiative along the Coquitlam River in 2021.
This is an original artwork by environmental artists, and former Port Coquitlam Artists-in-Residence, Dolores Altin and Elvira DS González in partnership with the Coquitlam River Watershed Roundtable and the City of Port Coquitlam.
Read more from the Tri-City News by clicking here.
Elvira and Dolores are multi-media artists who have combined their talents and backgrounds to form a collaborative art practice where natural and manmade materials collide to create interesting ideas.
Dolores Altin is a public artist with a deep appreciation for placemaking and environmental art. For over 20 years, she has covered various facets of Landscape Design, community planning and working with the public. Her designs explore human and cultural relationships to the natural world. Her art installations reveal the hidden processes in nature carrying messages of environmental connections, and responsibility through narrative and the use of natural materials.
Since the 1990s, Elvira DS González has been transforming a variety of objects into art expressions, from murals, to clothes, to sculptures, and pianos. Her art expressions explore how recycled and discarded materials can be combined and up-cycled into ‘trash art’ treasures; original art works of infinite possibility. Her work challenges our cultural notions of purpose, dispensability, beauty and time.
The Coquitlam River Watershed Roundtable (CRWR) is a multi-stakeholder body whose mission is to preserve and enhance the health of the Coquitlam River Watershed through collaboration, education and advisory action.
Lesley Perrie
Public Art & Community Engagement Specialist
Tel 604.927.8442
Email perriel@portcoquitlam.ca
