TRUCK CHILLING PARK

Joe Fafard

Obilix, 2001

1452 McGill Road, Kamloops

After a much-needed makeover, artist Joe Fafard’s iconic bronze bull sculpture, Obilix, is making his public return. In the Collection of the Kamloops Art Gallery (KAG), locals may recognize Obilix from his years residing at the entrance of Riverside Park near the Rotary Bandshell. In 2022 the City of Kamloops and the KAG removed the bull for restoration work after repeated acts of vandalism.  

Fafard is a Canadian artist best known for creating figurative bronze sculptural work and sculptures of animals in a highly realistic style. Obilix, 2001, is a cast, patinated bronze, half-sized bull and was a donation from the artist to the Kamloops Art Gallery in 2005. Fafard made this sculpture as a portrait of a bull named Obilix. It is an edition of five; the other four Obilix sculptures are on permanent display in locations throughout Canada, one at the entrance of the Toronto Zoo.  

Curator Peter White has argued that as symbols of stable, indomitable steadfastness and reliability, Fafard’s cows and bulls have taken on a kind of heroic dimension in Canada and can be seen as “marvels of mythic dimension and weight,” possessors of a heightened strength that is imbued eternally in bronze by the artist.(1) Many of Fafard’s cow and bull sculptures were celebrated in the Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s retrospective, Joe Fafard: The Bronze Years, in 1996. 

Through an ongoing partnership between the KAG and the City of Kamloops to present the KAG’s collection in public spaces throughout the city, the permanent site chosen for this iconic public artwork finds Obilix freshly restored and grazing on the grass in his new home at Kamloops’ Truck Chilling Park at the corner of Bunker Road and McGill Road. This passive green space near Thompson Rivers University is a popular lookout location above the city and has recently been transformed into a home for heritage-themed trucks and equipment.  

1 . Peter White, “Mythic Marvels,” in Joe Fafard: Cows and Other Luminaries, 1977-1987, Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 1987. 16.

Joe Fafard (b. 1942; d. 2019)
 Obilix, 2001 
patinated bronze, brass ring
edition 3/5 
Collection of the Kamloops Art Gallery, gift of the Artist
Photo: Teresa Donck-Matlock