Happy new year! This Digestif covers the remainder of January as we stretch into the swing of things.
Newsletter subscribers get first look at the Digestif, which go up on the site on the 1st and 16th of each month. If you are BC- or AB-based and have an exhibition, event, or job posting to submit for consideration in the next Digestif (February 1–15th), email details to: editor@reissue.pub
Fire + Water: New Films by Pedro Costa and Hong Sangsoo
January 8, 13, and 28
Tickets and showtimes here
The 61-minute feature, in water (물안에서), by Hong Sangsoo tells a characteristically modest and succinct story of three friends preparing to shoot a picture together on Jeju Island. Scouting beachside locations with his lead and cinematographer, a novice director forages for inspiration for his not-yet-written movie. Shot almost entirely out of focus, its pillowy images resemble impressionistic painting, evaporating memories, or, as the title lets on, a world seen underwater. in water is preceded by The Daughters of Fire (As Filhas do Fogo), a 9-minute short by Pedro Costa, a collaboration with Os Músicos do Tejo, a Portuguese early music ensemble. The short is a musical triptych depicting three Cape Verdean sisters — singers Alice Costa, Karyna Gomes, and Elizabeth Pinard — lamenting their fates in the aftermath of Pico do Fogo’s volcanic eruption.
Artist Talk: Sora Park in Conversation with Romi Kim
grunt gallery, #116-350 E 2nd Ave, Vancouver BC
Thursday January 11, 7pm
Free, register here
As a part of the exhibition Daughter, Daughter, Daughter, grunt gallery presents a conversation between exhibiting artist Sora Park, and interdisciplinary artist, Romi Kim. The two will discuss their shared experiences of growing up in Korean-Canadian households, and how they each incorporate Jesa, the Korean death anniversary ceremony, in their respective practices.
Unbearable Labour of Being: Parvin Peivandi, Marina Roy, and Helena Wadsley
CityScape Community ArtSpace, 335 Lonsdale Ave, North Vancouver BC
January 12–February 17, gallery hours here
Opening: Thursday January 11, 7pm
Free
Three artists from different cultural backgrounds come together and inquire about the conscientious labour of production. Parvin Peivandi, Marina Roy, and Helena Wadsley make interdisciplinary artwork by thinking through materials, material culture, the process of making, the affective and emotional potentials of art, and the social and political context within which the art and life of individuals are interwoven. In turn, this exhibition aims to connect with others, through igniting common feelings at the threshold of language (happiness, desire, loss, despair, and so on), as well as inviting the audience to reflect on their own life and stories.
Aporia (Notes to a Medium)
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 1825 Main Mall, Vancouver BC
January 12–April 14, gallery hours here
Opening: Thursday January 11, 6–8pm
Free
Featuring the works of Colleen Brown, Azza El Siddique, Dani Gal, Katie Kozak and Lucien Durey, Mark Lewis, Jenine Marsh, Jalal Toufic, Elizabeth Zvonar, this exhibition considers how history, mythology and wishful thinking entwine across media and through mediums. In this moment where faith in media, government and institutions is further collapsing, where binarization is on the rise, where expressions of doubt are tactical, this exhibition includes artists’ works that contend with systems of belief and perception to trouble truth’s material (and immaterial) forms. Holding space for doubt — a space of critical reflection that contains multiple truths or exposes the limits of truth — the exhibition’s title engages the paradoxical or impassable from the Greek word aporos. This impasse functions as an expression of real or pretend uncertainty that the works in the exhibition collectively query and channel.
Cirage: Evan Lee
Monte Clark Gallery, 53 Dunlevy Ave, Vancouver BC
Januar 13–February 10, Tuesday–Saturday 10am–6pm
Opening: Saturday January 13, 12-5pm
Free
Cirage, French for ‘shoe polish,’ investigates the tension between high art and low-class materials, pointing to the classism inherent in the economy of artistic production. Central to Evan Lee’s new body of work is an investigation into early photography, in particular Louis Daguerre’s Boulevard du Temple, taken in 1838.
Hank Bull’s Landscapes: The Storm Bay Paintings
Wil Aballe Art Projects, 1129 E Hastings St, Vancouver BC
January 13–February 24, Thursday–Saturday 12–5pm
Opening: Saturday January 13, 2–4pm
Free
In this collection of plein air works, Bull embraces the visible spectrum of natural light and atmosphere. Painted in Skookumchuck, BC, the Storm Bay series is a testament to Bull’s relationship to his surroundings and connection with his environment.
Feral Domestic: Dani and Sheilah ReStack
Western Front, 303 E 8th Ave, Vancouver BC
January 13–April 6, Tuesday–Saturday 1–5pm
Opening: Saturday January 13, 3–5pm
Free
Artists Dani and Sheilah ReStack use video, drawing, and photography to contemplate queer desire, family, and collaboration in a time of planetary crisis. This exhibition features a multi-channel installation of the video trilogy Feral Domestic (2017–2022) and three artist books of drawings, writings, and images related to each work, which together document the artists ongoing interest in the domestic as a space of creative possibility.
Sound of the Sun, Volume II
UNIT/PITT, 2954 W 4th Ave, Vancouver BC
Saturday January 13, doors 8pm
$15 NOTAFLOF
Volume II of UNIT/PITT’s Sound of the Sun cassette project launches with performances by Olivia Valenza, Spiral Remix, In the Are, and goddaughter. While Volume I was framed around the summer solstice, Volume II responds to the darkest time of the year. You can read “Transmission Most Fragile,” a review of Volume I by Ryley O’Byrne, here.
Dead Poets Reading Series
Massy Arts Society, 23 E Pender St, Vancouver BC
Sunday January 14, 3pm
Free, register here
In this reading series, deep threads of connection and solidarity are drawn between local, contemporary poets and a diverse array of poets from the past. Featuring Louise Gluck (1943–2023) read by Jennifer Zilm, Walt Whitman (1819–1892) read by Bradley Peters, Charles Olsen (1910–1970) read by Fred Wah, and Hiba Abu Nada (1991–2023) read by Jane Shi.
Hold these questions close: Gabi Dao
Unit 17, 207 W Hastings St, Vancouver BC
January 18–February 29, gallery hours TBA
Opening: Thursday January 18, 6pm
Free
Unit 17’s new downtown Vancouver gallery opens with the touring presentation of Dao’s current solo show at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin. Preceding the opening at The Polygon Gallery, Dao also has programmed An echo always calls at least twice, a film screening on Thursday, January 11 at 7pm. This program brings together three films that influenced the artist: Bambitchell’s Bugs and Beasts before the Law (2019), Fileona Endoxa Dkhar’s Ancestral Echoes (2022), and Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton’s Amaru’s Tongue: Daughter (2021).
Shen Xin: but this is the language we met in; 我们在这个语言中相遇
Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond Cultural Centre, 7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond BC
January 20–March 31, gallery hours here
Free
At the centre of Xin’s debut Canadian exhibition is the film, but this is the language we met in 我们在这个语言中相遇, the first in a forthcoming series titled Grounds of Coherence. Accompanied by four small paintings, the artist deepens their ongoing engagement with what they describe as “ways of coming to knowing, and the ecosystems of languages.”
Intersecting Orbits: Michael Morris and Joan Balzar
Griffin Art Projects, 1180 Welch St, North Vancouver, BC
January 27–May 5, Friday–Sunday, 12–5pm
Opening: Friday January 26, 6–8pm
Free
A generation apart in age, Balzar and Morris studied with the same painters (Jack Shadboldt, Joe Plaskett, Peter Aspell, Roy Kiyooka and Don Jarvis) at the Vancouver School of Art. Both achieved early success in the later 1960s, with expansively scaled, hard-edge abstract paintings and later, their conceptual explorations. Both were foundational to the development of abstraction and conceptualism in British Columbia. To be within their orbit was to be part of a movement which shaped and internationalized regional visual art in the 1960s and 70s, and both went on to become enduringly echoed and quoted. Co-curated by Lisa Baldissera and David MacWilliam.
Zine Harvest: Preserves
Lucky’s Comics, 3128 Main St, Vancouver BC
Saturday January 27, 5:15–9pm
Free
An evening of local zines and artist publications at Lucky’s Comics!
MENA 5
Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour St, Vancouver BC
January 27–February 1
Tickets and showtimes here
This year’s program focuses on bodies through space and time. Chronicling MENA/SWANA bodies through past, present and future, these films discuss how the body and mind function as a vessel for our daily lives and how systems of power seek to control its natural movements through space.
Calls
221a Fellowship, 221a (Vancouver, BC)
Open: January 1
Call for Board of Directors, James Black Gallery (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: January 15
Gift Shop Submission, Langley Arts Council (Langley, BC)
Deadline: January 30
Call for Artists: Teenage Super Star, Outsiders and Others Gallery (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: January 31
Artist Application, Vines Festival (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: February 5
2025 Call for Submissions, Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art (Kelowna, BC)
Deadline: March 18