Though most of the responses have been positive, Halifax-based artist Scott Saunders says critics of his art installation project, “Town Square,” don’t understand the message he’s trying to convey about space usage.
“They are ignorant to the entire process and what I’m trying to do,” says Saunders.
Saunders, 32, a graduate of the Fine Arts program at NSCAD, has put 102 business suit-wearing dummies with styrofoam heads all over the site of the former Chronicle-Herald building, which is now a concrete-and-rubble pit on Argyle Street.
He says, people have jokingly told him it looks like a zombie apocalypse, a parody of Halifax’s business community and a symbolic representation of the Halifax Explosion.
Saunders says the project was meant to get people talking. And that’s exactly what it’s done. It’s been on the lips of many Haligonians (see what a few said, below), but he says it doesn’t have any one meaning or represent one particular idea.
“It’s a project about potentialities; the potentiality of that space and people’s relationship to it now and the way it exists,” he says.
“One of the things I thought was fascinating with that space was all the limitations with it. The fence around it would always be where it is,” says Saunders. “Whatever was in that space, regardless of how long it’s there would have to be viewed from outside that fence.”
After contriving the town square idea, Saunders spoke to the businesses around Argyle Street and the downtown business commission to get their support for the idea. He was given $5,000 by HRM’s Open Projects program, to set it up.
The first stage of the project began on December 15. That’s when Saunders put approximately 60 figures in the vacant lot on Argyle Street.
Each figure has a Styrofoam head, with a body made of wood and stuffed with used insulation. He found clothing from local Salvation Army stores and dressed each figure in a basic outfit of shirts and pants, and a few of them have ties and jackets. When he finishes each figure, he lays it out in a unused position and stance in the space.
Even though the project was started in December, Town Square has been added to over the past few months.
Currently, there are 102 figures in the lot, and Saunders says he hopes to add at least 10 more by the time the project finishes in March.
While the figures will come down in the coming months, it still remains to be seen what will be permanently erected at the former Chronicle-Herald site.
Thanks to Scott Saunders for his photos of "Town Square."
