Welcome to year end’s ReIssue Digestif, a round-up of events on our radar for December. All times in PST.
If you are BC- or AB-based and have an exhibition, event or job posting to submit for consideration in the next Digestif, email details to editor@reissue.pub
Christopher Lacroix: 19,000 Scanned Anal Queefs and Counting
Access Gallery, 222 E Georgia St, Vancouver BC
December 1–January 13, 2024, Tuesday–Saturday, 12–5pm
Opening: Friday December 1, 7–9pm
Free
Christopher Lacroix’s solo exhibition 19,000 Scanned Anal Queefs and Counting employs methods of representing queerness and queer sexuality that evoke the queer body without relying on its renderings. Sculpture and photography illicit and document a repeated non-gendered, queer performance. Continuing the artists practice of hybrid fetish furniture and gym equipment, the exhibition consists of a machine designed to induce and scan anal queefs. Accompanying the machine are 19,000 laser prints of the scans covering the gallery walls. Gallery visitors are encouraged to take an anal queef home.
The Hungry Mist
Oxygen Art Centre, #3-320 Vernon St, Nelson BC
December 1–February 3, 2024, Wednesday–Saturday, 1– 5pm
Opening: Friday December 1, 5pm
Free
Guest curator Rodrigo D’Alcântara conceived of the exhibition as a response to the global pandemic alongside the very state of collapse and acute uncertainties of life caused by the neo-colonial system. The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta) draws on spiritual implications of the pandemic, directly alluding to an Indigenous Brazilian Guarani-Nhadeva cosmology that foresaw an invisible smoke arriving to take people’s lives. Featuring works by international artists Bento Leite (Brazil), Dyó Potyguara (Brazil), and Simon(e) Jakiriuma Paetau (Germany/Colombia), who look to repetitions of systemic colonial violence on bodies, the land, and our communities to contend with the present towards alternative futurities.
Open Studios and Art Sale
Howe Street Studios, 265 Howe St, Vancouver BC
Friday December 1, 5–9:30pm
Saturday December 2, 11am–6pm
Free
24+ artists from The Howe Street Studios (including the Malaspina Printermedia Residents), will open their studios as a group for this first time, two day event. Two floors of studios include installations, painting, photography, printmaking, ceramics, textiles, papermaking, woodwork, metal art and jewellery. Participating artist Include: Kelsey Grazier, Odera Igbokwe, Valerie Durant, Damla Tamer, Paige Gratland, Lucien Durey, Simon Grefiel, Tiziana La Melia, Aileen Bahmanipour, Hannamari Jalovaara, Gerri York, Sherida Charles, Janice Clements, Andrew Luktic, Miles van Yperen, Celeste Lucero Maas, Felix Rapp and others.
Kasper Feyrer and Lucas Clarke Artist Talk with Book Launch
Audain Gallery, 149 W Hastings St, Vancouver BC
Saturday, December 2, 2–4pm
Free
Join artist Kasper Feyrer and SFU glassblower Lucas Clarke for a talk and tour of the exhibition, Turn Toward. Facilitated by SFU Galleries Curator Kristy Trinier, Feyrer and Clarke will share their experiences in creating the glass artworks for the exhibition. This event will feature the launch of Kasper Feyrer’s publication, a scrapbook of popcorn, co-published by SFU Galleries with Publication Studio 66B/Edmonton. A limited-edition series of hand-bound publications with full colour illustrations will be available for purchase at the launch, with a black and white edition available through the Publication Studio network thereafter.
…wreckage upon wreckage…
Morrow, #204-910 Richards St, Vancouver BC
Saturday December 2, 7:47am–4:16pm
Sunday December 3, 7:49am–4:15pm
Tickets here (PWYC)
Created by A Wake of Vultures under the artistic leadership of Nancy Tam, …wreckage upon wreckage is a durational performance installation for a solo-performer accompanied by an immersive soundscape. From dawn to dusk, the performer encases her body with cling film and tape to create translucent skin-like sculpture. This process of chrysalis is repeated throughout the performance as a meditation on history, time, and the body. Audiences are welcome to come any time after the performance has started, and to stay and go as they please for the show’s entire duration.
ADD – A Different Dimension
The Annex, 823 Seymour St, Vancouver BC
Sunday December 3, 7–10:30pm
Tickets $18–$19.50 here
normie corp presents its first theatre production, featuring performances by six genre-breaking artists: Goo, 266sx, Turlte dreams, Almaazz, and City. Haunting vocals, sleazy beats, soothing melodies, and entrancing percussion will transport to you somewhere beyond our realm. The show is mostly seated, with options to lay down or dance in special areas.
Orlando, My Political Biography
Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour St, Vancouver BC
Tuesday December 5 and Wednesday December 6
Tickets and showtimes here
Taking inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, writer and theorist Paul B. Preciado uses the nearly 100 year-old novel as a framework to investigate the contemporary struggles of trans and non-binary people. Blurring the borders between fiction and documentary, the film addresses issues of gender dysphoria, gender affirming surgery, the political construct of gender in society, and the bureaucracy that surrounds legal gender markers. Winner of the Teddy Award and Encounters Jury Prize at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival.
Artist Talk: Tsēmā Igharas with Rita Wong
Aboriginal Gathering Place, Emily Carr University, 520 E 1st Ave, Vancouver BC
Wednesday December 6, 1–2:30pm
Free
The Libby Leshgold Gallery presents a conversation in conjunction with Misc. Activities Collective’s site-specific work, drift, currently showing on the Emily Carr University Urban Screen. Faculty member Rita Wong will sit down with Misc. Activities Collective’s Tsēmā Igharas in ECU’s Aboriginal Gathering Place to discuss drift’s call to examine our relationship with water and its relationship to the rapidly changing land.
Timeline Talks: crying at work (a score for the future)
Western Front, 303 E 8th Ave, Vancouver BC
Thursday December 7, 7:30pm
Free, register here
In the third and final instalment of the Contemporary Art Gallery’s Timelines Talks, artists and cultural workers Justine A. Chambers and Vanessa Kwan will present crying at work (a score for the future), a dialogue that considers how we might adapt to, address, embrace, and inhabit the future ahead. Programmed as part of the gallery’s forthcoming Timelines project, Timelines Talks is a series of talks and conversations that invite open reflection on the future of “Vancouver.”
Transform
KW Studios, #10–11 W Hastings St, Vancouver BC
Friday December 8 and Saturday December 9, 9pm–late
Tickets, passes, and set times here
New Forms Festival, Acceleration Radio, and Fromlife are partnering to host a two-day festival network of generative art, raves, and immersive music. The KW atrium will host DJ sets along with unique visuals and instrumental textures, while the production studio below will host a series of radical live performances. Highlights include lush generative visuals from Ephemeral Objects, and epic sets by Almaazz, C. Diab, Jarius Sharif & Mustafa Rafiq.
COMBINE Art Fair
Griffin Art Projects, 1180 Welch St, North Vancouver BC
Friday December 8, 7–10pm
Saturday December 9 & Sunday December 10, 11am–6pm
Free
Griffin Art Projects presents a weekend art fair held in its residency space. The third edition presents a collaboratively curated presentation between Monica Reyes Gallery, Unit 17, WAAP, Pale Fire Projects, and Royale Projects to bring together works by Annie Briard, Christian Vistan, Ani Schulze, Maru Aponte, and Ed Moses, respectively.
A Dream in the Eye
Pale Fire Gallery, 866 E Broadway, Vancouver BC
Saturday December 9, 7–10pm
Free
A Dream in the Eye: The Complete Paintings and Collages of Phyllis Webb (Talonbooks) by Phyllis Webb and edited by Stephen Collis will be launched with readings by Collis, Hayes, and Rahat Kurd. A Dream in the Eye presents the paintings and photocollages of poet Phyllis Webb, a major Canadian cultural figure from the ’50s–’80s. Webb published ten collections of poetry and prose and co-founded the CBC Radio program Ideas. Webb’s visual work in many ways responds to and expands upon concerns that she explored in her poetry: the natural world of the West Coast, global political strife, the artist’s struggle to express themself.
All That Heaven Allows
The Cinematheque, 1131 Howe St, Vancouver BC
December 15, 23, and 28
Tickets and showtimes here
Such is the influence of Douglas Sirk’s glossy, glorious melodrama that the film has twice been remade by notable Sirk acolytes: first by R.W. Fassbinder as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973); then by Todd Haynes as Far from Heaven (2002). The iconic original stars Jane Wyman as a middle-class, middle-aged widow whose love affair with her younger, “bohemian” gardener (Rock Hudson) scandalizes her class-conscious family and friends.
Calls
BIPOC Studio Art Award, Griffin Art Projects (North Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: December 4
Artists and Art Facilitators for Youth Art Retreat, Oxygen Art Centre, (Nelson, BC)
Deadline: December 8
Crescent Beach Pop-Up Gallery, Crescent Beach (Surrey, BC)
Deadline: December 13
Centre A Beer Label Design Campaign, Centre A (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: December 15
Call for screen-based work, Mount Pleasant Community Screen (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: January 12, 2024
2025 Call for Submissions (Exhibitions), Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art (Kelowna, BC)
Deadline: March 18, 2024