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Place des Arts exhibitions: September 5 to November 6 @ Place des Arts, Coquitlam
Three exhibitions begin at Coquitlam’s Place des Arts on the same day, meaning you can get extra bang for your (free) buck at the kickoff celebration. Group exhibition Our Stories, Our Voices honours the role of women in Indigenous communities and through a diverse array of works that explore the multifaceted power of the matriarchy. Colourful paintings from Alejandra Morales Garza capture the beauty and precarity of Mexican fruit stands in Agua pasa por mi casa, problematizing ideas of paradise and the tourists’ gaze. And Robert Riley’s Split Wood Sculpture shows off intricate carvings that turn single pieces of wood into dynamic, expressive creatures.
Try Keeping an Open Channel: September 6 to November 22 @ Western Front
Interdisciplinary Australian artist Archie Barry hops across the Pacific Ocean for a solo exhibition at Western Front. The show features three new video works and explores supra-real experiences—death, disembodiment, transness—that fall outside of the logical or rational. The three works—Second Line Work, Dream for Reed, and Water Build Bridges—follow their own kind of dream logic, evoking the feeling of being disconnected from your corporal form. By pushing the limits of what the human mind is supposed to be able to perceive, Barry asks viewers to reconsider themselves beyond the easily legible.
Splash 2025: September 8 to October 2 @ Pendulum Gallery
One of the biggest art events of the year returns for its 43rd annual event. Splash is Arts Umbrella’s annual auction, where the crème de la crème bid on art to raise money for youth arts programming—a worthy cause. If you’re not quite rich or ritzy enough to attend the gala on October 4, then worry not: you can check out all the works for sale at the Pendulum Gallery. Wander past large-scale paintings, and wonder at how much work has gone into every piece of art up for sale.
xwən̓iwən ce:p kwθəθ nəw̓ eyəł ((((Remember your teachings)))): September 13 to November 9 @ Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond
Musqueam, Simpcw, and Syilx artist Manuel Axel Strain looks to an iconic Coast Salish symbol in their latest exhibition: the longhouse. How does the structure of the longhouse confront the colonial context as a place of community, ceremony, and collectivism? Through multi-media works rooted in their own personal experience and knowledge learned from their relations, Strain celebrates the longhouse not just as an impressive architectural feat, but as a framework for Coast Salish culture. It stands as a challenge to re-examine the racist structures that continue to exist. In a society that prioritizes individualism, what can longhouses teach us?
NDN Giver: September 17 to January 25 @ Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
Bill Reid Gallery’s assistant curator Amelia Rea (Haida) marks her debut solo curatorial exhibition with NDN Giver, which centres on the gift-giving potlatch traditions of Nations in what’s now known as Northwestern B.C. The law known as the Potlatch Ban, which ran from 1885 to 1951, criminalized the ceremony in an act of cultural genocide—but, even in secret, the tradition survived for generations before the unjust law was overturned. NDN Giver considers cultural ideas of reciprocity, combining modern potlatch gifts with archival records to dive into a practice that the Canadian government tried to kill forever, showing how traditions continue to shift.
Edge Effects: September 20 to February 15 @ Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum, Burnaby
It’s not every day that Vancouver gets to welcome a new purpose-built art gallery into the city. The Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum on Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby campus will have its grand opening on September 20, and kick off its life as an exhibition space with a group show from 15 Canadian artists. The titular “edge effect” refers to the diverse biomes that form where two ecological areas meet: an idea the art museum pursues in its position on the boundary between public and academia, and continues with exhibited works that consider edge-cases and horizons. Artists including Jin-me Yoon, Patrick Cruz, and Justine A. Chambers are involved, as are the never-before-seen 1997 portraits that Liz Magor created at the San Diego-Tijuana border; and a new semi-permanent installation from Cindy Mochizuki inspired by kodama (forest spirits).
Enemy Alien: Tamio Wakayama: October 3 to February 22 @ Vancouver Art Gallery
It seems as though Tamio Wakayama, like many great artists, is finally getting his due only after his death. The Japanese Canadian photographer, who was interned in childhood and died in 2018, recorded striking moments from 50 years of history: protests against the Vietnam War and racism in the Southern United States, Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan, as well as the year-to-year cultural celebration of Vancouver’s own Powell Street Festival. Artist Cindy Mochizuki produced a film, Between Pictures, which helped raise his profile last year. Now, the Vancouver Art Gallery is set to host the first major solo exhibition and retrospective of his works.
Lee Miller: A Photographer at Work (1932-1945): November 7 to February 1 @ The Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver
Not many photographers worked for British Vogue as both a fashion photographer and a war correspondent. Lee Miller did both—having become a photographer after working as a model, to boot. Though this exhibition covers a short time span, it delves deep into the varied work that Miller was doing, examining her portraiture beyond its commercial value and as art in its own right that can tell us about the complex times she lived in. As an important figure in surrealist photography, even her more traditional works are full of wit—an indicator that she always looked awry at the world, whether at its most beautiful or most brutal.
Eastside Culture Crawl: November 20-23 @ various locations
The Eastside Culture Crawl turns 29 this year. If it were a person, it would be a Year of the Rat baby who’s probably great at posting on Instagram, the person who knows all the coolest spots and has a new hobby every time you talk to them and is genuinely, positively excited to turn 30. The four-day festival will be its usual vibrant self, with more than 500 creatives inviting the public into their studios in East Van to check out how the metaphorical sausage gets made—be it blown out of glass, hand-tufted from textiles, or sculpted from mahogany.
