Visual Arts 2024

EXHIBITION

VEILS & ECHOES Amberlie Perkin
Until November 2
THIS Gallery, 268 Keefer Free

With her exhibition Veils & Echoes, Amberlie Perkin examines how curious and embodied engagement with the natural environment can provide a visual and material language to articulate the complex and often abstract emotions of grieving. Her works are an expression of both the body’s fragility and incredible resilience in the face of illness and disease. By reflecting on nature and through rigorous material exploration, Perkin has found new ways to understand and respond to illness, disease, and death as they pertain to her own body and the bodies of those she has loved. Gallery hours: Fri and Sat, 12pm - 5pm. thisgallery.org

WINDOW DISPLAY

COMMUNITY OFRENDA AT THE LISTENING POST
October 28 to November 4
Listening Post, 382 Main Free

On November 1st and 2nd, ofrendas — altars decorated with candles, flowers, harvest vegetables, alcohol, tobacco, sugar skulls, special food, and photos — invite the spirits of the departed to join us before returning to the other side. The Listening Post’s street front window will feature a community ofrenda; visitors are welcome to come inside, experience the ofrenda, light a candle, and remember those they've lost. Opening in 2000, the Listening Post offers an oasis of calm in the swirl of Main & Hastings. Open afternoons Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; this is a space of reflection and connection in the heart of the community.

EXHIBITION

FOREST / FLUX / FREQUENCY
November 7 to November 16
Opening reception: Thurs Nov 7, 7pm
SUM gallery, #425 - 268 Keefer Free

SUM gallery presents FOREST/FLUX/FREQUENCY
by Rafael Zen & Khalil Alomar. This multimedia installation + sound performance imagines a futuristic electro-forest where nature can only be accessed through screens and projections. Reimagining the natural world and so-called human progress, the exhibition considers scenarios such as the impact of climate change, the sounds/images of post-human environments, cyborg theory, and the ecological consequences of technological advancement. Opening reception and a special performance by the artists November 7 at 7pm. Gallery hours: Tues to Sat, 12pm - 6pm. sumgallery.ca

EXHIBITION

GREEN SWANS: WILDFIRES AND RISING SEAS
Ramona Ramlochand
Curated by Alice Ming Wai Jim
Until November 16
Centre A, #205 - 268 Keefer Free/by donation

In Ramona Ramlochand’s first solo exhibition in Vancouver, the Montreal artist has created an entire series of new photographic and video installations confronting the devastating impact of global warming on all the planet’s living species. Green Swans: Wildfires and Rising Seas is presented as part of Centre A’s 2024-2025 program celebrating the gallery’s 25th anniversary. The exhibition is also part of the program marking 20 years since the international 2004 conference and exhibition Mutations<>Connections: Cultural (Ex)Changes in Asian Diasporas, convened by Alice Ming Wai Jim, and for which Ramona Ramlochand was an exhibiting artist. Gallery hours: Wed to Sat, 12pm - 6pm. centrea.org

EXHIBITION

WITNESS MATERIAL
Christen Mattix, Kristen Roos and Helena Wadsley
Until November 17
Bothkinds Project Space, 602 E. Hastings Free

Bothkinds Project Space is pleased to announce Witness Material, a sculptural exhibition that partners artists Christen Mattix, Kristen Roos and Helena Wadsley and examines materiality of place and purpose to tease notions of labour. By making visible the unseen, outmoded, traditional, and often inefficient, these artists’ works stand as a record and commitment to exploring lineage and connectivity. The soft sculptures are positioned in conversation that expands the roles of craft, history, and technology and how they can be communicated physically. Gallery hours: Fri and Sat, 12pm - 6pm. bothkindsprojects.ca

EXHIBITION

BECOMING ANARCHIVAL
Trudi Lynn Smith and Kate Hennessy
November 2 to November 30
Opening Reception: November 2, 2pm - 5pm
Gallery 881, 881 E. Hastings Free

Becoming Anarchival is a collaboration between artist-ethnographers Trudi Lynn Smith and Kate Hennessy that activates precarity and instability as generative forces in museums and archives. Emerging from their fieldwork around a defunded paleontology research centre in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia’s most recently established municipality, the exhibition uses documentary photographs, anthotype contact prints, and video works to foreground the anarchival as a condition that erodes widely held belief in archives, scientific knowledge, and civic structures as stable and enduring. Hennessy and Smith explore relationships between media and mining practices, settler-colonial exploitation, and their entanglements in paleontology and photography. Gallery hours: Tues to Fri, 10am - 5pm, Sat 12pm - 5pm. gallery881.com

EXHIBITION

SPEAKING WORDS OF WISDOM
month of November
Opening reception: Thurs Nov 7, 4pm - 5pm
Carnegie Gallery (3rd floor), 401 Main Free

A creative force in our community, Diane Wood is a Downtown Eastside resident, poet, artist, community activist and gardener. With a title prompted by the Beatles song Let It Be, Diane’s embroidery art pieces are inspired by pop culture icons and the festival theme, Threads of Connection. One hundred years ago young women embroidered flowered messages, like “home sweet home” and “God bless... whatever” to embellish textiles. Make sure to see this modern take on an age-old decorative technique. The exhibition will be up through the month of November, during regular Carnegie hours.

WINDOW DISPLAY

BECKY’S PURSE Mia Glanz
Until December 14
The Cheeky Proletariat, 320 Carrall Free

Becky’s Purse is an archive of the contents of a handbag and the scribbled fragments of thoughts which could belong to the artist’s friend Becky, a friend living with substance use and mental illness in Vancouver. A purse holds tools that facilitate everyday life. Mia builds a homage to Becky’s identity through the daily things she consumes, still rooted in the Y2K aesthetic from when they grew up together. Numbered like crime scene evidence, the images are part of a search for the cause of Becky’s illness. This is a document of seeing and being seen, cataloging Becky’s preoccupations.

EXHIBITION

VISUAL DIARY Hua Jin
Curated by Debra Zhou
November 9 to December 28
Opening reception: Sat Nov 9, 2pm - 5pm
Canton-sardine, #071 - 268 Keefer Free

This exhibition, Visual Diary (2020.3.18 - 2021.3.17), showcases a year-long exploration of nature through photography, video, and text by Hua Jin. Developed during the first year of the pandemic, the project arose from the sudden slowdown in daily life, offering Hua Jin a chance to reflect deeply on the natural world. Over the course of 365 days, she documented nature's subtle and ongoing transformations, contemplating universal themes of life, death, and the interconnectedness of humans with their environment. Hua Jin is an awarded visual artist based in Montreal, Canada, whose work has been exhibited internationally including in Canada, USA, China, Mexico, and the Netherlands. Gallery hours: Wed to Sat, 12pm - 6pm. canton-sardine.com

EXHIBITION

Rebecca Bair, Julian Yi-Zhong Hou, Byron Peters
Guest Curated by Phanuel Antwi
Until January 11, 2025
Or Gallery, 236 E. Pender Free

Enchantment is a group exhibition that looks at the way that Chinatown-Downtown Eastside (and Vancouver in general) enchants international capital, investors, and tourists. Rebecca Bair, Julian Yi-Zhong Hou and Byron Peters insist upon a counter enchantment. To these artists, this counter enchantment comes from reworking archival materials, to insisting on the lived experience of having relations in this neighbourhood, to mobilizing speculation, and fiction, to listening to the knowledge of the surrounding communities. Through sculpture, sound installation, and video poetry, the newly commissioned works remain alive to the ready-made imaginings of this place. Enchantment is presented with additional support from The Studio for Racial and Colonial Tidalectics (Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies).

Gallery hours: Wed to Sat, 12pm - 5pm. orgallery.org

EXHIBITION

FORMLINE: CALLIGRAPHY
The Creative Synergy of Bill Reid and Bob Reid
Until February 2, 2025
Exhibition Tour, Sat Nov 9 1pm - 2pm 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 exhibition explores the creative relationship between Haida artist Bill Reid and award-winning printer and close friend Robert (Bob) Reid. Guest curated by Dr. Martine Reid, it features two-dimensional and three-dimensional works by the two artists, focusing on their collaborative works. It also includes Bill Reid’s writing and other archival materials. Martine Reid highlights the artists’ shared understanding of the “well-made” concept in their respective fields. Bob considered books to be works of art that gave delight “to hold and see.” Bill considered Northwest Coast pieces of adornment as “objects of bright pride.” Combined with a sense of humour and playfulness, the exhibition reveals an exciting spirit of experimentation, Bill and Bob's mutual commitment to excellence, and their ongoing influence on artists today. Gallery winter hours: Tues to Sat, 10am - 5pm. billreidgallery.ca

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