British artist Liz West has unveiled a new series of public installations across downtown Toronto, transforming the city’s glass-and-steel architecture through colour and light. Titled Anthems to Colour, the project comprises three large-scale site-specific works commissioned by Luminato Festival and supported by Brookfield Properties. Installed across Brookfield Place, First Canadian Place and the Bay Adelaide Centre until 28 June, the works draw inspiration from West’s longstanding fascination with 90s pop culture and the collective energy of that decade’s music.
While the music provides a conceptual starting point, the installations remain rooted in the concerns that have long defined West’s practice. Working with coloured mirrors, transparent acrylic and refracted light, she creates environments that change throughout the day as sunlight moves across their surfaces. At Brookfield Place, Gridded Echo turns the building’s architecture into a kaleidoscope of reflections, whereas Ascending Colour Frequency responds to the surrounding skyline through panels arranged in a vertical structure. Elsewhere, Diffraction Tango explores iridescence, recalling the rainbow sheen of petrol on wet pavement or the surface of a compact disc.
West’s work has always been interested in how colour alters our experience of space, and Anthems to Colour extends that investigation into the public realm. These installations invite passers-by into a changing visual encounter shaped by weather and perspective. The project balances the artist’s characteristic interest in sensory perception with a spirit of playfulness borrowed from pop culture, bringing moments of unexpected colour into the rhythm of everyday urban life.
