Visual Arts

Restart 2020 – Hope and Optimism
Until October 29
Lost + Found Cafe, 33 W. Hastings Free

Connection Salon presents Restart 2020 - Hope and Optimism, a group exhibition of visual art works by Elsa Chesnel, Megs Gatus, Linda Haftner, Martin Hunt, Rudolf Penner & Gail D. Whitter, Katie Poetsch, Jacqueline Primeau, Ben Roback, Rebecca Slattery Chunn, Karen Vanon, and Ilirijan Xhediku. We will recover and change. We will strengthen and build hope inspiring relationships. We will value each other’s efforts, dreams and aspirations. It is time for a new beginning. We need art to survive. 

connectionsalon.ca Lost + Found Cafe hours: Mon to Fri, 9am-3pm, Sat, 10am - 3pm. 

Affirmations for Wildflowers: An Ethnobotany Of Desire – Tania Willard
Until November 13
Audain Gallery Hastings Street Window, 149 W. Hastings
Free

Tania Willard’s artistic practice engages cultural knowledges to cultivate works that range from land-based Indigenous contemporary art to survival strategies for contemporary socio-political upheavals. Affirmations for Wildflowers: An ethnobotany of Desire is a street-facing window exhibition that uses light projection, reflection, representations of flora, and personal and political affirmations to evoke relations of sustenance in uncertain but flourishing times.

The Artist Beheads Her Muse – Jocelyne Junker
Until November 23
Massy Books, 229 E. Georgia Free

Massy Arts Society is pleased to be presenting a solo exhibition featuring paintings and photographic works by Vancouver based artist Jocelyne Junker upstairs in the gallery at Massy Books. Jocelyne Junker is a Metis artist born in Saskatchewan. Her practice explores how photography can become entangled in performative gestures that affect the formulation and construction of self identity. Through photography Jocelyne engages in the questioning of representation and identity in the public sphere. Gallery hours: Mon - Sun, 10am - 6pm. 

Resurgence: Indigiqueer Identities
October 21 - January 24
• Open House, Friday November 6, 2pm - 5pm Free
Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, 639 Hornby
Adults $13, seniors $10, students $8, youth $6,
children under 12 free, families $30

This new exhibition celebrates the deeply personal and profound work of four emerging artists - and their unique identities and stories as queer Indigenous people. The featured works by artists Levi Nelson (Lil’wat First Nation), Jaz Whitford (Secwepemc), Morgan Whitehead (Plains Cree) and Raven John (Coast Salish/Sto:lo) explore the roles the artists see themselves playing in their communities today, influenced by their own rich experiences that reflect the diversity of Indigiqueer love and life. Resurgence: Indigiqueer Identities showcases various mediums from large-scale portrait and abstract paintings, traditionally-inspired jewelry, clothing and accessories with a twist, and colourful and creative sculptural art. Curated by Jordana Luggi. Gallery winter hours: Wed - Sun, 11am - 5pm

Time-Lapse: Posthumous Conversations
Geoff McMurchy Retrospective
October 29 - December 1
Opening Reception Thursday October 29, 5pm - 8pm
SUM Gallery,  #425 – 268 Keefer
Free 

A memorial retrospective of visual art by Geoff McMurchy, a storm force fag who blew open disability art in Canada and whose legacy includes a generation of disabled artists who thrived under his mentorship. Curated by Yuri Arajs, SD Holman and Persimmon Blackbridge in partnership with Kickstart and All Souls at Mountainview Cemetery. Gallery hours: Tues - Fri: 12pm - 6pm. By appointment only. More info.

Grounds for Goodness Story Card Window Displays
October 23 to November 8
InterUrban Art Gallery / Culture Saves Lives, 1 E. Hastings
Skwachàys Lodge Hotel & Gallery - 31 W. Pender Free

A real-life exhibition of cards created by residents of the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver and from across the land. The cards share stories and images of people helping, protecting and rescuing others, drawn from history, memory, family, tale, legend, memory and imagination – to be shared, collected, traded and enjoyed. Over the last month story cards have been contributed by community members at neighbourhood gathering places including the Carnegie Community Centre, InterUrban Gallery, Aboriginal Front Door, Carnegie Community Action Project, Community Thrift and Vintage, Benny’s Market, All Bodies Dance at BC ArtsScape Sun Wah, and the Art Tent and Peer Outreach at Strathcona Tent City. For further information, contact groundsforgoodness2020@gmail.com or www.groundsforgoodness.com

The Gas Imaginary – Rachel O’Reilly
Until December 19
Or Gallery, 263 E. Pender Free

A multi-disciplinary project using poetry, collaborative drawings, installation, moving images, and lectures to unpack the broader significance of ‘settler conceptualism', the racial logic of the property form and fossil fuel-based labour politics as capital reaches the limits of land use. In ongoing dialogue with elders of Gooreng Gooreng country and settler women activists, where fracking was approved for mass installation in 'Australia', new elements of this work address the threatened destruction to 50% of the Northern Territory. Visit website orgallery.org for links to talks and events online. Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 12pm - 5pm. 

Experimental Relationship  (For Your Eyes Only, Or Maybe Mine, Too)
Until December 31
Online, centrea.org/pixy-liao-online Free

Centre A presents an online exhibit of Brooklyn-based artist Pixy Liao’s ongoing project, Experimental Relationship. Staged photographs dwell on socio-cultural tendencies, power play, and emotional sustenance by examining the dynamics of Pixy’s personal, romantic relationship, performed with photography and printed matter. Since 2007, the Chinese-born artist has staged photographs and live performances with her Japanese boyfriend, Moro, in keen attempts to balance, reverse, or subvert cultural traditions and gendered behaviours in a seemingly tongue-in-cheek, yet graceful manner. Accompanying the photographic works in the exhibition is Pimo Dictionary, a collection of hybrids of Chinese, Japanese, English words and phrases as well as slangs, which was inspired by Pixy and Moro’s communication barriers.

13th Annual Oppenheimer Park Community Art Show
Fall Launch - TBA
Online, gachetfromaway.org Free

 The Oppenheimer Park Community Art Show goes on, this year in the form of a community artist book. With a focus on displacement and place-making, the publication features the artwork and perspectives of over forty artists connected to, or displaced from, the communities of Oppenheimer Park. Fall launch date to be announced soon. Visit Gallery Gachet's online exhibition space for news on our current and upcoming projects: gachetfromaway.org. Co-presented by Gallery Gachet, Oppenheimer Park and Vines Art Festival. For more information contact programming@gachet.org or 604-687-2468. 

OPS Mural
312 Main
Current

In your daily travels, walk by the historic 312 Main building’s west-facing wall to see a new mural project created by the DTES Artists Collective with the Overdose Prevention Society, Aboriginal Front Door and Raise the Rates. Led by artists BOY, Jenny Hawkinson and SPIRIT, they will reimagine “Lady Justice” in the context of our neighbourhood, with scales of injustice and an outstretched hand to help the community. 

Street mural art is vital in the DTES; it has been a form of art therapy throughout COVID, as well as a way to communicate directly to the members of our community who live and work on the streets 24 hours a day because these folks don’t have internet access. Smokey D. painted a mural with a message of thanks to health workers and volunteers, and the Festival printed a photo of this mural on the program guide inside-back cover to echo the message of thanks. 

These engaging works of street art by local artists are possible because of the support from WePress and the Heart of the City Festival, along with many organizations, volunteers, and individuals in the Downtown Eastside.