Employees and clients at Scotiabank’s newest downtown Toronto office tower will be surrounded by a multitude of art pieces, including a custom three-storey-tall painting by a Winnipeg-based artist.
Located in the Bay Adelaide Centre, Scotiabank North is the newest element of the Bank’s downtown campus and overall real estate strategy, as the way employees work — and where they do so — continues to evolve.
As the building was designed and built, Robyn McCallum, senior art curator, worked closely with various teams at the Bank, including Real Estate and Change Management, to fit the art pieces into the overall approach.
“We want to make sure that we have artwork from the regions represented on the floor. Their clients are flying in from those places, and it’s important to what they do and should reflect the space,” McCallum says.
When creating the collection McCallum and her team did not have any strict rules or guidelines. But they made sure they were incorporating different media, such as painting and sculpture, and various perspectives.
New building
Scotiabank North has been welcoming employees in stages since September 2022. The 32-storey building, of which 17 floors are designated for Scotiabank, is home to business lines including groups within Global Banking and Markets, Global Wealth Management and Corporate Services. Amenities include an outdoor terrace, dining facilities for hosting clients, as well as reflection rooms for prayer or meditation and inclusive washrooms. Scotiabank North is also Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified, a globally recognized standard for sustainable and green buildings.
Canadian artist Simon Hughes was commissioned by Scotiabank to design and create the largest art piece in the tower: a 9-metre-by-12-metre artwork that spans three floors in an atrium in front of the escalators. Wavelength was installed in June and is made up of nine approximately 3-metre-wide-by-4-metre-tall panels that each tell their own story, but also working together as one.
“You can’t really ever see the painting all at once, unless you’re standing right at the bottom and looking straight up,” says Hughes. “No matter where you’re standing, you get something different out of it.”
Hughes, who has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Manitoba School of Art and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine, is best known for watercolours and drawings that display architectural fantasies and northern landscapes. These works, sketched in ballpoint pen and incorporating various collaged materials, often feature holographic stickers of historic Canadiana.
Creating Wavelength
Hughes describes Wavelength as largely abstract: “It’s big chunks of colours and shapes,” he said. “It has a looseness, suggesting a landscape and northern lights over a flat bit of land.” The title is a nod to the late Michael Snow, the revered Canadian artist from Toronto whose works are considered foundational to both Conceptual Art and avant-garde cinema.
Hughes builds his colours up in layers. Taking detailed notes, he starts by mixing large batches of each shade, ensuring he has the perfect amount to keep it consistent throughout the piece. Next, he and his team tape down stencils, which are variously peeled off after each layer of paint is applied. Once the painting process on Wavelength began, it took about three months (following an elaborate design and pre-production process) to fully execute all nine panels in a large warehouse space adjacent to Hughes’ Winnipeg studio.
There are a lot of layers of paint—as many as 15 in some sections, he says. The particular method of layering with this combination of colours has been a feature of Hughes’ work for over a decade, but to translate it at this scale was a first for Hughes. Upon close inspection, little dots can be seen across the surface of the artwork (a result of applying paint with a commercial paint sprayer), which add another aspect of texture to the piece.
No matter where you’re standing, you get something different out of it.”
The installation process of the painting was a feat in itself. Each of the nine canvases were rolled up and shipped by truck from Winnipeg to Toronto with a specialized art transport company. Once there, stretching canvases of this size onto their aluminium stretcher frames presented another challenge due to space requirements. The Fine Art team’s solution was to use Scotiabank North’s conference centre space to stretch each canvas and install each panel one by one over several days, said Scotiabank curator Vanessa Runions.
“It's not just that the individual pieces are so big, it's that they all build into a piece that's so big too,” she said. “There are so many logistics that go into it, the tiny little things that you don't think about at first. That's been a really fascinating part of the process.”
Hughes hopes the various elements of the towering painting will spark conversation and reflection among employees in the new building.
“I keep picturing people going by on the escalator and I hope it's not just wallpaper in their day, I hope there’s something — whether it’s the dynamic lines or the way the shapes are configured — that makes their day a little better.”
Having worked on the project since January 2022, Hughes now wonders where his painting will be in 50 years. “I try to imagine it having a life down the road. Is it a timeless piece?”
For McCallum, art is largely about starting conversations; she wants people to be able to engage with the painting and other pieces, and hopefully improve their wellbeing in the office.
“I want people to come in and enjoy their workspace. People talk about the benefits of having art, how it impacts creativity and the way people are working. More importantly, it can be a real conversation catalyst and bring up new kinds of thoughts. And I think that's important.”
