Kamloops Art Gallery, city installs new permanent steel sculpture near Royal Inland Hospital

Photo: Josh Dawson

After Rome is a sculpture by Canadian Artist Peter Hide and has been permanently installed at the corner of Columbia Street and 3rd Avenue.

A large steel sculpture from the Kamloops Art Gallery’s collection has found a new perch at one of the city’s busiest intersections.

The sculpture, called After Rome by Canadian artist Peter Hide, has been relocated to the corner of Columbia Street and Third Avenue, next to Royal Inland Hospital.

The artwork had previously being displayed at the corner of Victoria Street and 2nd Avenue before being stored during a site renovation.

The work is loosely based on the human form, but Hide is an abstract sculpture and After Rome’s components are not meant to equate to body parts.

“It does, however, make a play between an angular compressive side and a loose, airy curvaceous side,” the artist said in a KAG news release.

“It is dynamic in space in that one view leads to another and so encourages the spectator to move around the piece. … Outline and scale are particularly important in my work as ways to establish the expressive content of the sculpture.”

Based in Edmonton, Hide is credited as being a major influence on young Canadian sculptures, particularly in Saskatchewan and Alberta, known for large-scale welded sculptures made of rusted industrial scraps. His work follows the “modernist assembled sculpture tradition” started by artists like Pablo Picasso.

“Hide’s sculptures abandon the traditional pedestal and instead stand independently as monoliths emerging from the ground,” KAG said.

“The artist welds and sandblasts the rusted Corten steel and does not apply a finish to the sculpture, revealing the natural qualities of this industrial material.”

After Rome has been permanently installed at its new location as part of a joint partnership with the city of present the gallery’s art collection in public spaces throughout the city.