Welcome to ReIssue Digestif, a bi-weekly-ish round-up of events on our radar. All times in PST.
If you are BC- or AB-based and have an exhibition, event or call-for-submissions posting to submit for consideration in the next Digestif (May 1–15th), email details to editor@reissue.pub
Takao Tanabe: Printmaker
Surrey Art Gallery, 13750 88 Ave, Surrey BC
Now–June 2, gallery hours here
Free
Organized by the Kelowna Art Gallery with Guest Curator Ian M. Thom, this exhibition features over sixty prints by renowned artist Takao Tanabe from their collection, as well as prints from the Vancouver Art Gallery, Winnipeg Art Gallery, and the Surrey Art Gallery. Tanabe is among Canada’s most celebrated painters and printmakers, recognized for his landscapes that bridge the gap between abstraction and realism.
Totem: The Return of the G’psgolox Pole
Bayview Elementary School, 140 View St, Nanaimo BC
Wednesday April 17, 6–8pm
Free
Award-winning Métis filmmaker and writer Gil Cardinal’s documentary follows the history of G’psgolox, a nine-metre mortuary Haisla pole that went missing in 1929, severed at the base. The pole’s fate was a mystery for over 60 years until it surfaced in a Stockholm museum, where members of the Haisla Nation journeyed in order to get it back in 1991. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Snuneymuxw Carver, Joel Good. Playing as part of Cinevolution’s CanFilmDay showcase in Richmond and Nanaimo.
DOXA Fundraiser
R&B Brewing Co., 54 E 4th Ave, Vancouver BC
Thursday April 18, 6pm
Tickets starting $20 here
This May marks the 23rd DOXA Documentary Film Festival! Every entry ticket, drink purchase and donation helps raise more funds for filmmakers to be attend and take part in this year’s festival.
Art Market & Tattoo Event
The Russian Hall, 600 Campbell Ave, Vancouver BC
Friday April 19, 12–6pm
Free entry
Vines Art Festival is hosting a tattoo gathering. A portion of each purchase will go directly to the Vines Artist Survival and Healing fund which provides low-barrier mutual aid fund to artists need of emergency support.
Signal House: Laura Gildner
Crummy Gallery, lot 51, Granville Island, Vancouver BC
Friday–Sunday April 19–21, 26–28, 12–6pm
Free
Crummy Gallery, a mobile art and gathering space, in partnership with FLEET and Other Sights for Artists’ Projects presents Signal House, a series of lens-based exhibitions on Granville Island throughout March and April 2024. This program features a rotating series of site-responsive installations in, on, and around Crummy over the course of six weeks by a collective of artists from Vancouver Island. Laura Gildner’s LOVECHILD will be on view these last two weeks of April. Patrick Swayze’s molar serves as the inspiration for the work, which follows Gildner’s attempt to make sense of society’s cultural fascination with celebrity and the desire to revive what can never truly be replaced.
Ancestral Dreams and Other Premonitions: Cindy Mochizuki
Kamloops Art Gallery, 101–465 Victoria St, Kamloops BC
April 20–July 6, gallery admission and hours here (free Thursdays)
In this first survey presentation of Cindy Mochizuki’s practice, the through lines of enduring and intersecting themes emerge through four key artworks. As a significant part of her artistic process, Mochizuki’s projects work through material and story recovery where she engages family members, community participants, and archives to realize and shape her multi-media installation. She works closely with members of these communities and often includes her paternal family’s history, both within internment camps in Canada during World War II and through their experiences as repatriated Japanese Canadians (kika-nisei) in post-war Japan.
Unit Bruises: Theodore Wan and Paul Wong, 1975–1979
Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond Cultural Centre, 7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond BC
April 20–June 30, gallery hours here
Opening: Saturday April 20, 2–4pm
Free
This exhibition brings together the works of two Chinese-Canadian conceptual artists active during the 1970s: Theodore Sasketche Wan and Paul Wong. By mobilizing their respective bodies, and the visual languages of medical and procedural illustrations, both artists subverted notions of objectivity that have been naturalized through such hegemonic imagery. Through these intensely physical works, the two artists respectively asserted their othered subject-positions as people of colour as well as ruminated on the topics of illness, death, and the human condition. Curated by Michael Dang.
In Grief and Poetry: Patrick de Belen
Massy Arts Society, 23 E Pender St, Vancouver BC
Monday April 22, 6pm
Free, register here
Toronto-based, award-winning poet and filmmaker Patrick de Belen creates a space for participants to witness, explore, and navigate grief through the vehicle of storytelling. There will be a premiere screening of Tell Me A Story About Someone You Miss, a short documentary on grief and loss directed by Patrick, a poetry performance and grief-centred writing workshop. This is a masked event.
Witnessing Genocide in Palestine
Massy Arts Society, 23 E Pender St, Vancouver BC
Tuesday April 23, 6–8pm
Free, waitlist available here
Co-hosted by Massy Arts, Massy Books, and the Public Humanities Hub, this roundtable discussion will feature humanities experts Brenna Bhandar, Adel Iskander, Jasbir K. Puar, and André Elias Mazawi. These scholars will be speaking on the ongoing genocidal contexts happening in Palestine, reflecting on modes of witnessing — journalism, social media, trial and testimony, and other forms of cultural production — and consider what it means to bear witness to such devastation under threats of censorship, denial, erasure, and suppression.
Okâwîmâwaskiy
The Cinematheque, 1131 Howe St, Vancouver BC
Wednesday April 24, 7pm
Tickets here
This program of shorts, named after the Cree word for Mother Earth, explores the reverence for the natural world that sustains and shapes our lives. Shiringa: Amazon White Gold examines the connection of the Shiringa tree to the Indigenous peoples of Peru, while Walking with Plants navigates the academic and cultural realms of ethnobotany, the study of interrelations between people, place, and plants. Mãri Hi—The Tree of Dream follows shamanic experiences of the Yanomami people and their relationship with the Mãri Hi tree. Indigenous Plant Diva focuses on the work of T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss in downtown Vancouver, passing down plant wisdom to her daughter, Senaqwila. Following the screening, Kamala Todd, director of Indigenous Plant Diva, and T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss, the film’s subject, will participate in a discussion and Q&A about Indigenous ethnobotany, activism, and art.
Making Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration
Two Rivers Gallery, 725 Canada Games Way, Prince George, BC
April 26–October 6, gallery hours here
Free
This travelling exhibition is the result of a decade of research by Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood, and highlights artists who are, or have been, incarcerated, alongside artists who have not been incarcerated but whose practices expose aspects of the carceral state. Seen together, their works reveal how punitive governance, predatory policing, surveillance, and mass imprisonment impact millions.
CLAM presents: David Rimmer Deep Cuts
Bestway Studio, 21 E Pender St, Vancouver BC
Tuesday, April 30, 8pm (doors 7:30pm)
Tickets by donation
Deep cut shorts by the late experimental filmmaker David Rimmer will be featured, as a follow-up to the Cinematheque’s mid-month National Canadian Film Day screening of Rimmer’s work, happening on April 17th. An innovative figure in early structuralist/materialist cinema, Rimmer’s playful, poetic, and meticulous work has had a significant impact both in his home city of Vancouver and abroad. CLAM (cinema, literature, art, and media) is a monthly (or otherwise) event which blends short films, archival performance documentation, live performances, and experimental collaborations with local artists. It is collectively run by Yasmine Whaley-Kalaora, Joshua Silickas, and Elisha Burrows.
Calls
Wikipedia Scholar, The Black Arts Centre, Rungh Magazine, UBC, & KPU
Apply now (program on until end of April)
Call for Submissions (QAF Community Art Show), Queer Arts Festival & James Black Gallery (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: April 18
Call for Submissions (Curatorial Mentorship Program), Vancouver New Music (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: April 25
Call for Submissions (Out & About Program), Open Space (Victoria, BC)
Deadline: April 26
Call for Participants (Writing Mentorship), Centre A (Vancouver BC)
Deadline: April 30
Call for Applicants (Emerging BIPOC Artist Residency), Centre A (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: May 13
Call for Submissions, Vancouver Outsider Art Festival (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: May 14
Call for Submissions (Summer Group Exhibition), Langley Arts Council (Langley, BC)
Deadline: June 5
Call for Submissions (Photography Group Exhibition), Langley Arts Council (Langley, BC)
Deadline: June 12