Past Events
2026
As part of the 2026 Capture Festival, please join us for a special tour of Embodied Conversations with Vancouver-based photographer and film/video artist Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez, examining the photographic elements presented as part of the exhibition.
Curated by Jefferson Aladé and Inspired by Lorraine O’Grady’s Art Is… series, currently on view at Griffin, Aladé creates a listening session/room, noting that “responding to the idea that art is as much a revelatory experience as an everyday one.
Join us for a tour of Embodied Conversations: The Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection with exhibition curator Lesley Johnstone in conversation with Montreal-based collector Lillian Mauer.
Join us on January 30, 2026 from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM for the opening of Embodied Conversations: The Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection. Curated by Lesley Johnstone.
Join us Friday, January 9th from 6 - 8PM as we kick off the New Year with the Opening Reception for our YouthHub exhibition, Hands That Hold: Family Archives Transformed Through Collage and Ceramics.
2025
Claudia Goulet-Blais invites the public to experience the works she has created during her residency at Griffin Art Projects.
Join us for an engaging online discussion between renowned curator Candice Hopkins, Executive Director, Forge Project, Griffin Director Lisa Baldissera and Adjunct Curator Emily Butler.
(Online via Zoom)
Join us on Sunday, November 30 for an Artist in Residence talk with the GRIFFIN X ECU Fellowship Studio Award Winner Claudia Goulet-Blais. Goulet-Blais research focuses on maternal relationships, exploring the complexities of care and the shifting roles within family dynamics.
This panel discusses the history of collecting in British Columbia and the central role that collecting Indigenous belongings and artwork has played, considering its complexities and its futures.
Join Sylvie Fortin for a Curator-in-Residence talk in person at Griffin Art Projects. Sylvie Fortin is an interdependent curator, researcher, writer, and editor based in Montréal and Buenos Aires. In 2017, Fortin began a long-term, interdisciplinary, itinerant curatorial inquiry into the currencies of hospitality. She now realizes it will be a lifelong project.
A chronicle of the elusive Black American art star David Hammons whose category-defying career radically seeks to fuse the dominant culture and his own into a new one for the 21st century.
Evening includes a post-screening in-person Q&A with co-Director Harold Crooks!
Join us for an engaging online discussion between renowned UK-based Lebanese collector Maria Sukkar, founder of the ISelf Collection, and Adjunct Curator Emily Butler.
American conceptual artist and writer Jill Magid, whose work featured in Griffin’s TENXTEN exhibition, resumes her ongoing interrogation of power structures in her debut film, described by the artist as “part thriller, part romance.”
Evening includes a post-screening online Q&A with Director Jill Magid!
Join us for a tour of The Collectors exhibition with the artist Christos Dikeakos, facilitated by curator Lisa Baldissera.
The Griffin Art Projects is excited to share that we will be participating in the 15th annual North Shore Art Crawl October 4-5, from 11-5pm* hosted by North Van Arts. Come check out our latest exhibition, Christos Dikeakos The Collectors and browse our selection of publications.
As part of our 10th Anniversary celebrations, a special Conversations on Collecting series will feature collectors in conversation on the key topics of arts philanthropy: Nurturing the Artistic Talent of Tomorrow, Collecting to Build Community, Transformational Legacies.
Yucho Chow, Portrait of group of Chinese women, circa 1930, Photograph, Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, CC-PH-00200
Miriam Cahn, Flüchtlinge. 2014, Oil on canvas, Collection of Jane Irwin and Ross Hill, Image courtesy of Jörg Lohse
2024
Join Future Worldings artist Sun Forest for a two-part workshop engaging with biomaterials as a fluid, complex space of radical possibility.
Join the team of Grenville+Fille (Bruce Grenville and Alice Mackenzie) as they share their discoveries and processes researching and archiving the work and legacy of feminist innovator in contemporary tapestry, Ann Newdigate (1934-2023).
Image: Sentences: Fanakalo and the Vanishing Signs (detail), 1993 Cotton warp. Mixed media, weft: silk, linen, wool, synthetic blends 198.12 x 198.12 cm
Join Future Worldings artist Sun Forest for a two-part workshop engaging with biomaterials as a fluid, complex space of radical possibility.
Join us for a discussion with Curator-in-Residence Melissa Feldman as she touches on her independent curatorial work, as well as her research into humour and artistic practices during her residency at Griffin.
Join us for the Future Worldings Conference, presented by the Aboriginal Gathering Place + Jake Kerr Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at Emily Carr University and Griffin Art Projects, in collaboration with the UBC Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice.
The Future Worldings Conference considers approaches to shared “worldmaking,” employing a collective and collaborative methodology that arises from the contributions of partners, presenters and audience members. The Future Worldings Conference provides a forum to work alongside and with one another to articulate and reflect on our shared relations to the unfolding concerns of thinking through decolonial futures together. The Future Worldings Conference also considers how it may be possible to retain the specificities of site, body, history, access and cultural understandings in order to “world” together.
From 9 - 7PM on campus at ECU, the Future Worldings Conference features presentations by international artists and curators, including Nura Ali, Lisa Baldissera, Sven Christian, Randy Lee Cutler, Bongi Dhlomo, Sun Forest, Dora Alejandra Gaviria-Sernal, Mimi Gellman, Wezile Harmans, Lebogang Mogul Mabusela, Pebofatso Mokoena, David Ng, Usha Seejarim, Daniel Stompie Selibe, Sikho Siyotula, Karen Tam, Pat Vera, Daina Warren, and Xwalacktun. The day’s events will also feature a special post-conference Reception & Performances with Pebofatso Mokoena (South Africa) and See Monsters (Canada), to be held from 5 PM to 7 PM at the Aboriginal Gathering Place.
Open Studios with Future Worldings Artists
Sunday, September 15—12:00PM–4:00PM.
Performance by Wezile Harmans at 1 PM.
Presented in collaboration with Contemporary Art Society Vancouver (CASV).
In Person: Griffin Art Projects Residency Studios and Griffin Art Projects, 1180 Welch Street + 1174 Welch Street, North Vancouver
Explore Open Studios with the Future Worldings artists, showcasing works of South African artists—Lebogang Mogul Mabusela, Pebofatso Mokoena, and Wezile Harmans—and three Canadian artists—Nura Ali, Sun Forest, and Xwalacktun. This event is part of the Future Worldings Project at Griffin Art Projects.
The Open Studios offers a unique opportunity to explore what the artists have been working on during their residency.
The event will include a 30 minute performance, held in the Griffin Gallery space, titled My Name is... to be continued by Wezile Harmans at 1 PM.
My Name is... to be continued is an ongoing series work that explores the impact and urgency of knowledge transmission in discomfort. Using live spoken words borrowed from the Indigenous people of Southern Africa, Khoisan and Nguni language, Wezile Harmans makes a reference to the tensions and disjunctures between formal and informal knowledge systems. This power struggle takes embodied form through the interplay of gestures, collective conversation and movements, which suggest that the tension between who gets to speak and who listens remains perpetually unresolved. In that process history and identity is distorted.
Join Bahar Mohazabnia, Griffin’s Assistant Curator of Engagement for an Exhibition Tour of The Prop House: A Collection of Over One Million Objects in Farsi.
Join us for a Live from the Studio event with Curator-Residence Wayne Baerwaldt online via Zoom!
We extend a warm invitation to join us for an enlightening Conversation on Collecting with Leslie Madsen, as part of Griffin’s exhibition, The Prop House: Collection of One Million Objects, who will share the journey of her collection over over one million objects, that comprises Mount Pleasant Furniture’s holdings. A prop house in the film and video industry for over forty years, Leslie will discuss the development of the collection and its place in the heart of filmmaking and theatre imagination. This ongoing series builds on Griffin Art Project’s mandate to make privately held art collections accessible to the public.
Visit the Griffin Art Projects Residency for an Open Studio to view the creative processes and research of Homa Khosravi, BIPOC Studio Award Winner, and Aiden Kirkegaard, Griffin x ECU Studio Award Winner, as they share their work developed during their residency at Griffin!
Join us for a compelling pre-recorded artist talk with Charlene Vickers, presented as part of Griffin Art Projects' special programming for National Indigenous Peoples Day and National Indigenous History Month!
Zoom-in to a virtual artist talk with Homa Khosravi, BIPOC Studio Award Winner and Aiden Kirkegaard Griffin x ECU Studio Award Winner. Khosravi and Kirkegaard will discuss the work and research conducted during their time at Griffin!
Curated by Lisa Baldissera and Paul Wong, The Prop House: A Collection of One Million Objects celebrates Mount Pleasant Furniture (MPF), a prop house wonderland for film, television, stage and art communities.
Join Griffin’s Assistant Curator of Engagement Bahar Mohazabnia in person for an exhibition tour of Intersecting Orbits: Michael Morris and Joan Balzar in Farsi.
Join artist-in-residence Chad Wong online to learn what he has been up to during his time at Griffin!
Meet artist-in-residence Chad Wong at Griffin’s residency space to view the featured Capture Festival exhibition I live here!, and attend our Open Studios to learn about the research of Paris-Vancouver Curatorial Program resident Lucie Camous
Visit Emerging Indigenous Studio Award winner Cody Tolmie in person to celebrate the work and research of his residency. Drop in for a casual chat between 12 and 5 PM.
Tune in online to hear what Emerging Indigenous Studio Award winner Cody Tolmie has been up to during his time at Griffin!
We are pleased present: mini-conference, Arcs and Orbits: Art, Relationality and Innovation on site at Griffin Art Projects!
Join curators Lisa Baldissera and David MacWilliam for a hybrid (in person and online via Zoom) exhibition tour of Intersecting Orbits: Michael Morris and Joan Balzar.
Drop by Griffin’s residency space to see what Indigenous Studio Award resident Rolande Souliere has been up to during her time at Griffin.
2023
As part of this year’s COMBINE Art Fair, this virtual roundtable brings the founders of the Art Fair—Monica Reyes Gallery, Unit 17 and WAAP (Wil Aballe Arts Projects)—together with an invited gallerist to speak on the importance of gallery-led collaboration within the Canadian arts ecology and to feature highlights from the fair!
Join us for a hybrid Curator’s Tour with Griffin Art Projects director and curator Lisa Baldissera and visit our residency Open Studios to celebrate the work and research of 2023 Paris-Vancouver Program Resident, Anne Bourrassé, and Griffin x ECU Fellowship Recipient, Maru Aponte! Drop in for a casual chat with the residents between 12 and 5 PM.
Join us online to hear what the 2023 Paris/Vancouver Curatorial Residency Program Resident, Anne Bourassé, has been up to during her time at Griffin.
Join us online to hear what the recipient of the Griffin x ECU Fellowship Studio Award, Maru Aponte, has been up to during her time at Griffin.
This ongoing series builds on one of Griffin Art Project’s mandates: to make privately held art collections accessible to the public. Join us in person at Griffin Art Projects as Jeffrey Boone, collector and UBC MA candidate in Critical Curatorial Studies, and Glenn Alteen, curator and writer, discuss the embodied relations of art collections.
The SHIFT Conference, co-curated by Dr. Karen Tam and Dr. Lisa Baldissera, will engage academics, museum specialists, collectors and artists including keynote speaker, Alexis Walker, Associate Curator of Dress, Fashion and Textiles at the McCord Stewart Museum (Montreal) and features three panels: Fashion Ecologies, Histories of Fashion and its Futures and Sticky Pictures: The Intersection of Art and Fashion on Griffin’s recent publication produced in collaboration with Figure 1 and the Musee d’art contemporain, Montreal (MAC).
Cover Image: Janet Werner. Leg, 2021. Oil on canvas. 50.8 x 45.7 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal.
Join us for a pre-recorded talk by the inaugural recipient of the Emerging Indigenous Artist Studio Award, Miriam Berndt and collaborator, Musqueam Artist, Grace Ulu discussing land-based practices, unveiling family histories, and reconciling stories from their nuanced matrilineal heritage.
If you have always wanted to know how to start an art collection, join us at Griffin Art Projects for COMBINATIONS, an in-person social event for emerging collectors with gallerist Wil Aballe (Wil Aballe Art Projects)!
Join us in-person for a dynamic multi-event reception for SHIFT: Ecologies of Fashion, Form and Textile.
Join us in-person at Griffin Art Projects on Sunday, August 27 for a multi-event celebration to close the summer! From 12 - 2 PM, Griffin will host a reception for Per Diem: The Gerd Metzdorff Collection, a lushly illustrated full-colour publication featuring Canadian and international artists from Metzdorff’s stunning collection. Refreshment, food and remarks from Grant Mann and David Birdsall will celebrate the Metzdorff collection along with artists featured in the publication. At 2:30 PM, the final exhibition tour with Emmett Hanly will provide the inside scoop on this enigmatic collector’s choices. And from 12 - 5 PM, Griffin will also host Open Studios with artists Jaewoo Kang, ECU x Griffin Graduate Studio Award Winner Marion Landry, and August Curator-in-Residence, Bernard Liebov.
Join the recipient of the Griffin x Emily Carr University Studio Award, Marion Landry, live over zoom to learn about her practice and what she has been up to during her time at Griffin.
Join us online to hear from artist and curator, Su Ying Strang, about her work in the arts and past curatorial projects including the archival exhibition and research lab Pulling Back the Paper (The New Gallery, 2021).
Su Ying Strang (she/her) is an artist and cultural worker based in Sikohkotoki on the traditional territories of the Siksikaitsitapi. Su Ying joined the Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin in 2021 as the Gallery’s executive director, and previously served as director of The New Gallery in Mohkinstsis (2012–2021). She received a BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts (2010), has completed the Rozsa Arts Management Program (2016) and Banff Centre’s Cultural Leadership Program (2017), and was a fellow of the Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators (2020). Su Ying’s work in the arts is informed by an artist-centered and community-driven ethos, prioritizing thoughtful stewardship of artistic practices and accessibility to programming for audiences.
Griffin Art Projects is excited to present this ongoing series, which embodies our mandate to make privately held art collections accessible to the public. Join us for engaging conversations that bring together art enthusiasts, collectors, and experts in an exploration of contemporary art and collecting practices.
In this upcoming in-person event, Griffin’s adjunct curator, Dr. Karen Tam, will moderate a conversation with three Vancouver-based art collectors who will share their invaluable experiences and passion for art. We are thrilled to welcome Ann and Marshall Webb, and Andrew Booth to this discussion. Seasoned art collectors, Anne and Marshall will talk about acquiring and living with art for over thirty years. Andrew Booth, curator of the renowned Vancouver Art Blog, an Instagram account devoted to promoting and showcasing Vancouver's vibrant contemporary art scene, will bring his perspective as a collector who embarked on this journey just a few years ago.
Together, Dr. Karen Tam, Andrew Booth, Ann, and Marshall Webb will delve into various topics surrounding contemporary collecting practices. Their extensive knowledge, experiences, and personal insights will offer a unique glimpse into the challenges, joys, and rewards of building and maintaining an art collection. Join us as they discuss the evolution of their collections, their collecting strategies, the importance of community, and the transformative power of sharing their collections.
Join us in person for the launch of Griffin Art Projects’ recent publications, with informal remarks by contributors Su Ying Strang (Whose Chinatown? conference organizer), Karen Tam (Whose Chinatown? curator), Patrik Andersson (The Great Exchange: Teeth, Loan and Trust Company, Consolidated: The Trylowsky Collection, curator).
How might the pandemic shape the future of Toronto’s Chinatown? Five scenarios tackling this question are imagined by Asian Canadian youth, with their speculations brought to life by a visual collage of dreamlike LiDAR 3D modeling scans.
Join artist-in-residence Jaewoo Kang in the first half of a two-part Intergenerational Eco-Fashion Workshop in person at Griffin Art Projects’ Residency Space, presented in conjunction with the upcoming Fall exhibition project at Griffin, SHIFT: Fashion, Form & Textile which features work at the intersection of contemporary art, textiles and fashion through Canadian and international artists.
Join artist-in-residence Jaewoo Kang in the first half of a two-part Intergenerational Eco-Fashion Workshop in person at Griffin Art Projects’ Residency Space, presented in conjunction with the upcoming Fall exhibition project at Griffin, SHIFT: Fashion, Form & Textile which features work at the intersection of contemporary art, textiles and fashion through Canadian and international artists.
Join artist Matilda Aslizadeh in the studio for an informal in-person chat about the work she has undertaken during her time at Griffin. Drop-ins welcome!
Join the recipient of Griffin Art Projects’ North Shore Studio Art Residency Award, Matilda Aslizadeh, to learn about her practice and what she has been up to during her time at Griffin
Join Lisa Baldissera, Griffin Art Projects director and curator of Per Diem II: The Gerd Metzdorff Collection, for an in-person curator’s tour followed by a Q&A.
With the passing of this enigmatic and remarkable collector, Gerd Metzdorff’s stunning collection is presented to the public for the first time at Griffin Art Projects.
Join us in person at Griffin Art Projects with gallerist Tobin Gibson (Unit 17) for wine, cheese, and a chat about starting your own art collection. We will be discussing collecting from different angles in a casual environment.
Join us in person for the opening of Per Diem Part II: The Gerd Metzdorff Collection, with collectors Grant Mann and David Birdsall in attendance for a casual meet-and-greet.
Join our artists-in-residence Miriam Berndt and Phoebe Bei in the studio for an in-person chat about the work they have undertaken during their time at Griffin!
Miriam Berndt is a Plains Cree and Irish woman living in cə̓snaʔəm (so-called Marpole, Vancouver BC), with roots in Kahkewistahaw First Nation and an upbringing on Six Nations of the Grand River territory. Her mixed media art explores themes of generational healing, hybrid identity, and land-based epistemologies through abstract expressions. She specializes in land-based design through a landscape architecture lens.
Phoebe Bei is an emerging interdisciplinary artist whose practice addresses politics of land, cultural memories, and collective identities. Working largely in photographic processes and installations, her research is rooted in critical studies on ‘the image’ and representation. Her work navigates fictional and existing embodiments of land and how land is occupied, manifested and disseminated in our production of place, culture and identity. Currently, she has found fictitious unions between disparate subjects like land, language, affect, and body/bodies constructive in her understanding of self as an inconclusive and often confusing entity. However, it is through an exchange in dialogues—this sifting of what is retained, projected and disposed of that she has found fertile in informing her contemporary conditions.
Ali Ahadi and Babak Golkar, the artists behind Alibaba Conundrum, will host an artist talk in discussion with a panellist to be announced, followed by a Q+A.
Working together as Alibaba Conundrum, they note, “This exhibition critically examines how different ways of seeing, and subsequently those of saying, are manufactured today through the hegemony of the English language, globally conditioning the possibilities of thinking. It also explores how the link between the socio-economic structures of the neoliberalism, Christian theology, and the global institution of art with its English grammar, maintains the contemporary habitus of thinking through diverse regimes of image production and media cybernetics (...)”.
Curated by Griffin Art Projects’ Adjunct Curator, Dr. Karen Tam, join us for an online streaming of the second of two feature-length films around language.
Haida Gwaii, 1800’s. At a seasonal fishing camp two families endure conflict between the nobleman Adiits’ii and his best friend Kwa. After Adiits’ii causes the accidental death of Kwa’s son, he flees into the rainforest, descending into madness and transforming into Gaagiixid – “the Wildman.” When the families return in the spring, they discover Adiits’ii has survived the winter. Can he be rescued and returned to his humanity? Meanwhile, Kwa wrestles with his deepest desire – revenge. SGaawaay K'uuna (2018, dir. Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown) is the first feature-length film made entirely in the Haida language.
Join “Through a BIPOC lens” series’ artist in residence, Phoebe Bei, to learn what she has been up to through her time at Griffin!
Phoebe Bei is an emerging interdisciplinary artist whose practice addresses politics of land, cultural memories, and collective identities. Working largely in photographic processes and installations, her research is rooted in critical studies on ‘the image’ and representation. Her work navigates fictional and existing embodiments of land and how land is occupied, manifested and disseminated in our production of place, culture and identity. Currently, she has found fictitious unions between disparate subjects like land, language, affect, and body/bodies constructive in her understanding of self as an inconclusive and often confusing entity. However, it is through an exchange in dialogues—this sifting of what is retained, projected and disposed of that she has found fertile in informing her contemporary conditions.
Join the recipient of the Griffin Art Projects ’Indigenous Emerging Artist Award 2023, Miriam Berndt, to learn what she has been up to through her time at Griffin!
Miriam Berndt is a Plains Cree and Irish woman living in cə̓snaʔəm (so-called Marpole, Vancouver BC), with roots in Kahkewistahaw First Nation and an upbringing on Six Nations of the Grand River territory. Her mixed media art explores themes of generational healing, hybrid identity, and land-based epistemologies through abstract expressions. She specializes in land-based design through a landscape architecture lens.
This ongoing series builds on one of Griffin Art Project’s mandates to make privately held art collections accessible to the public. Join Griffin Art Projects in conversation with collector Haitian-Canadian Yves Pierre-Louis and gallerist Hugues Charbonneau for a virtual discussion revolving around alternative art-collecting economies.
Join Griffin Art Projects for a virtual panel discussion between three Indigenous curators as they discuss their methodologies and approaches to curation.
Lorilee Wastasecoot (Legacy Art Gallery), Aliya Boubard (Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art), and Jocelyn Piirainen (National Gallery of Canada) will discuss their approaches to the curation of Indigenous art within a field still largely dominated by colonial values of art, culture, and space. Panelists will provide insight into their past projects, curatorial methodologies, and about the overlap between Indigenous art and the Western fine arts world.
Curated by Griffin Art Projects’ Adjunct Curator, Dr. Karen Tam, join us for an online streaming of the first of two feature-length films around language.
Those Who Come, Will Hear (2017, dir. Simon Plouffe) proposes a unique meeting with the speakers of several Indigenous and Inuit languages of Quebec. The film starts with the discovery of these unsung tongues through listening to the daily life of those who still speak them today. Buttressed by an exploration and creation of archives, the film allows us to better understand the musicality of these languages and reveals the cultural and human importance of these venerable oral traditions by nourishing a collective reflection on the consequences of their disappearance.
2022
Vancouver’s newest art fair will be the inspiration for a discussion on the nurturing of arts ecologies. Check back soon for more details!
Join us for the splash opening of the second iteration of COMBINE Art Fair with Lisa Baldissera (Griffin Art Projects), Tobin Gibson (UNIT 17), Wil Aballe (WAAP), Monica Reyes (Monica Reyes Gallery) and special guest gallerist, Montreal-based Hugues Charbonneau (Galerie Hugues Charbonneau) as we celebrate another art fair season.
This set of powerful and moving short films that reimagines histories and diasporic futures, marks the end of the ReMIX History public program series. A special Q+A with selected directors will follow the screening.
Join the recipient of the Griffin Art Projects Emily Carr University Education and Outreach Fellowship Award, Lacey Jane Wilburn, to learn what she has been up to through her time at Griffin!
Join the recipients of the Paris - Vancouver curatorial research residencies in person as they introduce their research and works in progress as situated practices of care and kinship.
Join the 2022 France/Canada Curatorial Residency Program awardee, Clelia Coussonnet, to learn what she has been up to through her time at Griffin!
Accompanying Stan Douglas: Allegories of the Present at Griffin Art Projects, ReMIX History is a public program series including film screenings, conversations with curators and panels with artists and musicians.
Griffin Art Projects’ Director, Lisa Baldissera will present a live virtual curator’s tour of Griffin’s current exhibition, Stan Douglas: Allegories of the Present, followed by a Q+A period.
This event celebrates the public launch of Wetland Project: Explorations in Sound, Ecology and Post-Geographical Art, an artists’ book produced by Brady Marks and Mark Timmings.
Accompanying Stan Douglas: Allegories of the Present at Griffin Art Projects, ReMIX History is a public program series including film screenings, conversations with curators and panels with artists and musicians.
Griffin Art Projects’ Adjunct Curator, Dr. Karen Tam, and The Polygon Gallery’s TD Curatorial Fellow, Oluwasayo Olowo-Ake, will co-host an engaging panel discussion with artists and musicians to explore migration, sound and place. The conversation will delve into acoustic mappings of history, the land and waters, sonic architecture, and the impact that migrations have had on the creation of diasporic and border-crossing sounds and music.
Join artist James Harry for a talk about his most recent piece for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in collaboration with SOS Children’s Village BC. Harry is of Squamish (Swxwú7meshḵ) and European descent and is the recipient of the 2022 Griffin Art Projects Indigenous Studio Award. With Q&A led by Indigenous Curatorial Assistant, Emmett Hanly.
Accompanying Stan Douglas: Allegories of the Present at Griffin Art Projects, ReMIX History is a public program series including film screenings, conversations with curators and panels with artists and musicians.
Join the recipient of the Griffin Art Projects Indigenous Studio Art Award, James Harry, to learn what he has been up to through his time at Griffin!
Join the recipient of the Griffin Art Projects Annual Emily Carr University Studio Residency Award, Kyla Gilbert, to learn what she has been up to through her time at Griffin!
Join the recipient of Griffin’s BIPOC Studio Art Award, Parvin Peivandi, to learn more about what she has been up to throughout her time at Griffin Art Projects!
Parvin Peivandi is an artist who makes art across disciplines including sculpture, ceramics, painting, drawing, performance, installations, and community art projects. Born and raised in Iran of Kurdish descent, Peivandi makes art influenced by Western Minimalism and Iranian literature and architecture. By deconstructing the architectural elements and juxtaposing conventional and unconventional materials together, she explores the spaces of personal and public narratives, memories of the place and the dynamics of social/political systems.
Karen Zalamea (she/her) is a Filipino-Canadian artist, educator, and cultural worker based in Vancouver, Canada, the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəyə̓ m (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Zalamea’s interdisciplinary practice is rooted in photography and critically considers methodologies, materiality, and modes of presentation. Her research centres on the camera mediated relationship between body and space, as well as the material and representational potential of the photographic surface.
After the From the Eye Straight Down to the Soul panel discussion, join us for Chats & Chews, an informal post-conference discussion. Bring an appetizer and/or a drink, and join us in conversation to unpack the ideas sparked during the panel discussion. Initially conceived as part of the Whose Chinatown? virtual conference, Chats & Chews are intended as informal mingling sessions for community members to connect and come together to explore the themes discussed in the previous panel over casual conversation, virtual drinks and snacks.
Join Griffin Art Projects’ adjunct curator, Dr. Karen Tam and special guests for an engaging panel discussion focused on art collecting. Drawing on themes explored in Griffin’s current exhibition, Per Diem: The Gerd Metzdorff Collection, this panel explores how collecting art begins, how collections evolve over time and the relationships that develop between artists and collectors.
Aggie is a feature-length documentary that explores the nexus of art, race, and justice through the story of art collector and philanthropist Agnes “Aggie” Gund’s life. Emmy-nominated director Catherine Gund focuses on her mother’s journey to give viewers an understanding of the power of art to transform consciousness and inspire social change. Aggie is internationally recognized for her robust and prescient support of artists–particularly women and people of colour–and her unwavering commitment to social justice issues. The film opens with Aggie selling Roy Lichtenstein’s “Masterpiece” for $165 million to start the Art for Justice Fund. The proceeds from one of the highest grossing artworks ever sold fuel a monumental effort to reform the American criminal justice system and end mass incarceration. The film captures Aggie as a true maverick, who demonstrates the unique role and potential of collectors and benefactors to use art to fight injustice. This is untapped terrain, and we see Aggie leading the way.
Join Griffin’s artist-in-residence Shoora Majedian to learn more about what she has been up to throughout her time at Griffin Art Projects!
Shoora Majedian received her MFA at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She received a Post-bacc in Painting and Drawing from SAIC in Chicago and MA from Tehran University. Shoora has participated in national and international exhibitions in Tehran, Chicago, Toronto, and Vancouver.
Originally from El Salvador, Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo's areas of research and art production are concerned with issues of collective memory, historical trauma, migration and identity explored through multimedia approaches to drawing, which involve printmaking, stop-motion animation and installation work. His art process is an intuitive construction of memory as a form of personal myth-making that casts political expressions, voices modes of resistance, and most recently speaks to a process of reconciliation, repair and healing. He has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally, attended art residencies and received multiple awards/grants/fellowships from the Canada Arts Council, the City of Vancouver, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Santa Fe Art Institute among others. A former resident of Montréal, he lives in Vancouver where he currently teaches at Emily Carr University.
50 works of art to 50 states. 2500 extraordinary gifts from one ordinary couple.
A follow up to award-winning documentary ‘Herb & Dorothy’, the film captures an ordinary couple’s extraordinary gift of art to the nation as they close the door on their life as collectors. When Herb and Dorothy Vogel, a retired postal clerk and librarian, began collecting works of contemporary art in the 1960s, they never imagined it would outgrow their one bedroom Manhattan apartment and spread throughout America. 50 years later, the collection is nearly 5,000 pieces and worth millions. Refusing to sell, the couple launches an unprecedented gift project giving artworks to one museum in all 50 states. The film journeys around the country with the Vogels, meeting artists who are famous or unknown, often controversial, striking today’s society with questions about art and its survival.
Join Griffin Art Projects and The Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver in conversation with collectors Grant Mann and David Birdsall for a virtual discussion revolving around the collection of Gerd Metzdorff. Building on one of Griffin Art Project’s mandates to make privately held art collections accessible to the public, this ongoing series is presented in partnership with the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver.
Featuring the stories of extraordinary art collectors, the Vogels and Agnes Gund, these three documentaries will inspire you to consider how anyone can appreciate, love and buy art, no matter your background. And that there is more than one way to be an art collector.
Join Griffin Art Projects’ Director, Lisa Baldissera for a live virtual curator’s tour of Griffin’s current exhibition, Per Diem: The Gerd Metzdorff Collection.
Lisa Baldissera has worked as an independent curator, consultant and writer, and in curatorial roles in public art galleries in Western Canada since 1999, including Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary (2014-16) and Chief Curator at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon (2012-14).
Aileen Bahmanipour is an Iranian-Canadian visual artist and currently is living and working on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) people. She has received her BFA in Painting from the Art University of Tehran and MFA in Visual arts from the University of British Columbia. Bahmanipour has exhibited her work in a body of solo and group exhibitions internationally as well as in Canada, including her solo and group exhibitions at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Vancouver’s grunt gallery, and Two Rivers Gallery. She is the recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant in 2017, Early Career Development grant from BC Arts Council in 2019, Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council’s grant in 2021.
Bill Burns’ work about advanced industrialism, donkeys, goat’s milk, salt, safety gear, and honey bees has been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Mendes Wood Gallery, Sao Paulo; 303 Gallery, New York; the Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.He has published artists’ books with publishers in Canada, Germany, USA, UK, Austria, and Denmark. His most recent titles include A Book About the Power 100, published by Verlag Mark Pezinger, Vienna (2018) and Hans Ulrich Obrist Hear Us, published by YYZ BOOKS and Black Dog Publishing, London, UK (2016). His artists’ editions are included in collections at Tate Britain, London, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Getty Center, Los Angeles. Mr Burns is also Artistic Director of the Dogs and Boats and Airplanes Experimental Children’s Choir. The choir has produced live performances and audio works at festivals in Australia, Argentina, the UK and Canada.
Join artist Esteban Pérez for a virtual artist talk, hosted live over Zoom, to learn more about his practice as well as his experience as the inaugural artist in residence at the Similkameen residency, an off site residency located in BC’s interior.
“During the residency, I want to focus my time-space on two ideas: noise as time; and reversibility of time. For both ideas, I am interested in deconstructing sound and video within a given space in order to create an evolving sensorial landscape. I want to explore sonic and video mapping to question rigid geometries of time and space” - Esteban Pérez
Griffin Art Projects is delighted to be kicking off the new year with a special two-day exhibition titled The Something Garden, January 15 & 16, 2021, 12:00-5:00PM, featuring the works of thirteen North Vancouver high school students in grades 10 – 12. Through the use of recycled materials and the consideration of the juxtaposition of organic and non-organic forms and concepts, these paper-clay sculptures suggest elements of the natural world as much as they do the surreal. This exhibition has been organized in collaboration with Artists for Kids Studio Art Academy, as part of Griffin Art Projects’ Youth Mentorship Program.
2021
Presented in collaboration with Queer Arts Festival and SUM Gallery, join Natis and Dion Smith-Dokkie, to learn more about what they have been up to throughout their time at Griffin Art Projects!
Join the founders of COMBINE Art Fair for a roundtable on how the North Shore's first fair came to be and the vision for its future. With Wil Aballe, Tobin Gibson, Ron Regan, Monica Reyes and Lisa Baldissera.
Join current artist-in-residence TanTan Hong live via Zoom to learn more about what she has been up to throughout her time at Griffin Art Projects!
Join artist-in-residence Mollie Burke to learn more about what she has been up to throughout her time at Griffin Art Projects!
Guest curator Patrik Andersson will host a live virtual discussion with Dr. Zenon Trylowsky to highlight the history and evolution of the Trylowsky collection.
Guest curator Patrik Andersson gives a virtual tour of Griffin Art Project’s current exhibition Teeth, Loan and Trust Company, Consolidated: The Trylowsky Collection. This exhibition highlights an impressive collection of art work acquired by Dr. Zenon Trylowsky over the past 25 years mainly through acts of exchange with artists for dental services at his Vancouver clinic. The exhibition also foregrounds his support of the independent curatorial platform Trapp Projects who for more than a decade used Trylowsky’s dental office as an alternative curatorial space. The exhibition title refers to a fake cheque made and signed by the French artist Marcel Duchamp in lieu of payment owed to his American dentist Dr. Tzank in 1919.
Viewed by dental appointment! Public Viewing: Saturday October 2nd and 9th, 2021. Where: TRYLOWSKY GALLERY, 1216 - 736 GRANVILLE STREET, Buzz Dr. Trylowsky 1216 to enter building.
This exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver and functions as an extension of the exhibition Teeth, Loan and Trust Company, Consolidated: The Trylowsky Collection.
Join us live over Zoom for an afternoon of thoughtful exchange and collaborative discussion with Johannesburg-based artists Lebogang Mogul Mabusela and Wezile Mgibe. The artists will deliver back-to-back presentations, offering a glimpse into the research and works produced throughout the Worldings virtual residency program, followed by a group conversation and live audience Q/A.
Griffin is thrilled to announce an international residency exchange in partnership with the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa to take place in July / August 2021. This residency opportunity will connect a BC-based Indigenous Canadian artist with a Joahnnahesburg-based artist over the course of an intensive two-month creation period during which the artists will have the opportunity to meet virtually, build a relationship and engage in critical dialogue fostered through scheduled studio visits and discussion sessions.
Join us for an afternoon of thoughtful exchange and collaborative discussion with Griffin’s inaugural BIPOC and Indigenous Studio Award Winners. The artists will present back-to-back studio visits and individual presentations followed by a group conversation and live audience Q/A.
Back by popular demand! Initially conceived as part of the Whose Chinatown? virtual conference, Chats & Chews are intended as informal mingling sessions for community members to connect and come together for casual conversation over virtual drinks and snacks.
Back by popular demand! Initially conceived as part of the Whose Chinatown? virtual conference, Chats & Chews are intended as informal mingling sessions for community members to connect and come together for casual conversation over virtual drinks and snacks.
Join current artist-in-residence Emily Neufeld to learn more about what she has been up to throughout her time at Griffin Art Projects!
“Throughout my residency I will be working on casting some sculptures in gypsum cement and in cold cast bronze. The sculptures are composed of natural items mixed with construction materials, including both soft, fragile objects and hard surfaces. I will also be doing research into resource extraction towns across BC and some processes and techniques I want to use in making work in these mining and pulp and paper ghost towns in the coming months.” - Emily Neufeld
Join current artists-in-residence Ali Ahadi and Babak Golkar of the Alibaba Conundrum to learn more about what they have be up to throughout their time at Griffin Art Projects
Alibaba Conundrum is an artistic group composed of Babak Golkar and Ali Ahadi. Of Iranian heritage, dwelling in the English language, they are both artists, practicing in a variety of disciplines and media, critically examining how different ways of seeing, modes of subjectivization, and the manifestation of ideas are globally manufactured and determined through the hegemony of English language.
Presented by Griffin Art Projects and Urban Shaman, Worldings: A Virtual Conference brings together a weekend of collaborative panels and presentations facilitated live over Zoom exploring the unique artistic perspectives and histories that exist in Canadian and South African experience as seen through the eyes of artists, writers, curators and activists. Coinciding with the presentation of the solo exhibition William Kentridge: The Colander, curated by Lisa Baldissera, this virtual gathering reflects on the concept of ‘the colander’ and how the global events of 2020 expose, through the experiences that have unfolded in each place, unique histories of precarity, globalization and colonization, to focus on resilience and resistance.
PREVIEW EVENT!
IMPERFECT CONSTELLATIONS
Adjunct curator and moderator at Griffin Art Projects, Karen Tam, will be hosting an informal conversation that brings together an intimate group of artists and cultural producers engaging with key themes of resilience and resistance from a BIPOC settler perspective. From institutional critiques to explorations into the politics of archives and the effects of colonialism on diasporic communities in Canada, this panel explores ways that art and artists address the gaps in dominant discourse and narratives by creating and sharing space for underrepresented voices to tell their stories. Panelists include Dr. Marissa Largo, Pamila Matharu, Moridja Kitenge Banza and Jen Sungshine and David Ng of Love Intersections, with South African-based artist and curator Usha Seejarim as respondent.
Join Griffin Art Project’s Director, Lisa Baldissera for a live virtual curator’s tour of Griffin’s current exhibition, William Kentridge: The Colander.
Drawing from private collections in Western Canada as well as a selection of previous projects and new works from the Kentridge Studio, South Africa produced during 2020’s global pandemic, William Kentridge: The Colander explores the critique of political structures in Kentridge’s printmaking and filmmaking—looking at the layered, kinetic and collaged nature of his formal working processes, to investigate the porousness and vulnerability of artmaking and life—as well as the processes of the studio in his 2020-2021 series, Studio Life. Planned with the research and curatorial assistance of Jillian Ross, of Jillian Ross Print, as well as Parts & Labour, VivianeArt, Calgary and David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, The Colander will be held at Griffin Art Projects from May 29 to September 4, 2021.
As part of our ongoing Conversations on Collecting series, this two-part miniseries will focus on the impacts that COVID19 has had on artists, galleries, curators, studios and online entities operating within the complex ecosystem of the international art market in South Africa, Canada and beyond.
As part of our ongoing Conversations on Collecting series, this two-part miniseries will focus on the impacts that COVID-19 has had on artists, galleries, curators, studios and online entities operating within the complex ecosystem of the international art market in South Africa, Canada and beyond.
Join Latitudes Co-Directors Roberta Coci and Luci MacGarry for a conversation focused on the challenges, changes and silver linings encountered over the course of the past year amidst COVID-19, and what it means to break down barriers and inequalities in the art world as the founders LATITUDES, the first platform of its kind dedicated to African art.
Join Griffin’s current artist-in-residence, Alannah Clamp, for an artist talk live over zoom to learn more about what she has been up to throughout her time at Griffin Art Projects!
Alannah Clamp is an artist from North Vancouver, British Columbia. She has her bachelor of fine arts in Photography from Emily Carr University, a Bachelors in Art History from Concordia University and a Masters in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. She has exhibited her photographic and video work in Canada, the UK, and South Africa.
Join two Canadian artists live over zoom for a conversation focused on the photographic documentation of Chinatowns across North America. Morris Lum and Suzanne Girard will deliver short fifteen-minute presentations, followed by a group conversation and live audience Q/A Session.
Griffin Art Projects is thrilled to present a weekend of collaborative panels and talks facilitated live over zoom in partnership with Centre A, The New Gallery and the Asian Canadian Writer's Workshop with collaborative support from Tea Base, Aiya哎呀 and Youth Collaborative for Chinatown.
Join Linda Zang, professor in the School of Interior Design at Ryerson University in Toronto ON, to learn about the story and process behind her recent project ChinaTOwn, a multi-player board game that prompts participants to put their heads together to negotiate what is worth including in a community space.
Join four Canadian comic artists, illustrators and storytellers for a collaborative panel discussion exploring means of defining identities, retelling histories, creating cultures of resistance and reclaiming space through creative practices in the world of print and publishing.
Join Griffin’s current artist-in-residence, Chase Keetley, for an artist talk live over zoom to learn more about what he has been up to throughout his time at Griffin Art Projects!
In the Shadows of Gold Mountain features filmmaker Karen Cho as she travels from Montreal to Vancouver to uncover stories from the last survivors of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act, a set of laws imposed to single out the Chinese as unwanted immigrants to Canada from 1885 to 1947.
Join Griffin’s current artist-in-residence, Navarana Igloliorte, for an artist talk live over zoom to learn more about what she has been up to throughout her time at Griffin Art Projects!
Join Vancouver-based artist Marlene Yuen for a letterpress printing demonstration and artist talk streamed live over Zoom from WePress, a community artspace in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
As development threatens Chinatowns across the globe, In Chinatown captures the enduring stories of the people and places of one of Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhoods through the eyes of local residents both young and old.
2020
Griffin Art Projects is inviting you to make some snail mail to brighten someone’s day. Here’s how it works: Our hands-on creative Snail Mail kits will be available for pickup at the gallery every Saturday from 12 – 5pm from October 3rd to December 13, 2020.
Eighteen Drawings is the latest release from micro-publisher As We Try & Sleep Press, edited by Kegan McFadden.
This new artist book of recent drawings by Garry Neill Kennedy is published in a limited edition to celebrate the artist’s 85th birthday. The book reproduces both sides of these drawings in full scale, capturing the movement and gusto with which they are created.
Join guest-curator David MacWilliam in conversation with internationally renowned artists Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler.
Join Griffin’s current artist-in-residence, Kelly Lycan, for an artist talk live over zoom to learn more about what she has been up to throughout her time at Griffin Art Projects!
Kelly Lycan is a photo-based installation artist who resides in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Griffin Art Projects invites viewers to stream David Craig’s The Mill, a gripping portrait of a rural community deeply divided over the fate of the local pulp mill.
Edmonton’s 中華門 Harbin Gate was dismantled for LRT construction on November 4, 2017. In response, aiya哎呀, an intergenerational group of Edmonton-based artists and Chinatown community members, invited contributors to share their memories of Edmonton’s Harbin Gate by expressing their thoughts in the form of an art calligraphy banner.
Join Canadian artist Cathy Busby in the Vancouver home she shares with Garry Neill Kennedy for an intimate look at the hand-drawn artist proof for Lawrence Weiner’s book Posters: November 1965-April 1986, published by NSCAD Press in 1986. Busby was involved in collecting the posters for this book, as the then director of the Anna Leonowens Gallery.
Join New York based artist and gallery director Martha Wilson for a live virtual Zoom talk presented in conjunction with Griffin’s upcoming exhibition Now Bulletin: Artworks, Letters and Printed Matter from the Garry Neill Kennedy Collection 1968 - 2019. Wilson will talk about her experiences as a young artist in Halifax in the 1970’s where she become involved with the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design’s revolutionary arts community, spearheaded by college president Garry Neil Kennedy, who was, at the time, in the midst of transforming the institution into a forerunner of art education.
A number of students who studied at a small art college in Halifax went on to become teachers and professors at a number of Fine Art Faculties in Universities across Canada. Five artists living in the lower mainland will recall and talk about what they learned from their experience at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) and how their time there influenced their teaching pedagogy and the impact that this may have had on subsequent generations of students and artists.
Lindsay McIntyre is a film artist with an MFA in Film Production from Concordia and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Alberta. She applies her interest in analogue technologies, film chemistry and structure to make award-winning short 16mm films and expanded cinema performances.
Taryn Sheppard is a Vancouver-based artist and architect. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto (Master in Architecture, ‘10) and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (Bachelor of Fine Arts, ‘05). She is a co-founder of Woodford Sheppard Architecture based in her home province of Newfoundland & Labrador, who have completed numerous award winning projects in the coastal Atlantic region and have been published in international magazines including Dezeen and The Globe and Mail Arts.
Join artist Karen Tam in the studio to see what she’s been up to while in residence at Griffin Art Projects.
Karen Tam is a Montreal-based artist whose research focuses on the various forms of constructions and imaginations of cultures and communities, through her installation work in which she recreates spaces of Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops and other sites of cultural encounters.
Determined to implement a solution that continues to offer support to Chinese Restaurants in North Vancouver, while also helping those who are facing self-isolation, Griffin Art Project’s has developed a creative response to the situation at hand. We’ll be using our modest event budget to offer a limited number of complementary take-away meals delivered by a local Chinese Restaurant, to individuals in North Vancouver who are feeling particularly challenged by the current situation
Join us for an engaging and thought-provoking afternoon in the gallery as we explore the exhibition’s main themes of activism, care, and HIV / AIDS through the lens of public health. Griffin is pleased to partner with the Dr.Peter AIDS Foundation for a screening of “The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter”.
Building on the main themes of sexuality, self-organization and activism presented in Griffin’s current exhibition, Vancouver based artist Paul Wong will revisit the controversy surrounding his 1984 project tiled “Confused: Sexual Views” which was banned by the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the ensuing legal battles that he fought and lost.
Join artist Emilie Crewe in the studio to see what she’s been up to while in residence at Griffin Art Projects. Her current project, funded by a Canada Council for the Arts Research to Creation grant, consists of a three-channel large scale video installation with surround sound, featuring the prominent Canadian bass trombonist Julia McIntyre. Emilie writes: “With a cache of footage that includes scales, arpeggios, solo music and improvisational melodies, the project will oscillate between experimental documentary and fictional video art.”
Join us for a presentation and discussion with Emilie Crewe, current artist-in-residence and the inaugural recipient of Griffin Art Project’s North Shore Studio Art Residency Award.
Crewe’s current investigations are centered on “musical components and structure, with specific research geared towards the neuroscience of music and how our bodies and emotions respond to rhythm, timbre and contour.”
Join us at Griffin Art Projects for a screening of Glasgow based artist, filmmaker and musician Luke Fowler’s “Electro-Pythagorus: A Filmic Portrait of Martin Bartlett.” In this work, Fowler pays tribute to the work and musical ideas of Martin Bartlett (1939-93), a proudly gay Canadian composer who during the 1970s and 1980s pioneered the use of the ‘microcomputer.’
Griffin Art Projects is partnering with the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery and The Cinemateque to host a full weekend of film screenings, lectures and panel discussions dedicated to exploring the context of AIDS and activism through art and film. This program is presented in conjunction with Griffin Art Project’s exhibition The Sodomite Invasion, and the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery’s exhibition David Wojnarowicz: Photography and Film, 1978 -1992.
Griffin Art Projects is delighted to be kicking off the new year with a special two-day exhibition titled Burnt Dust, featuring the works of twenty-four North Vancouver high school students in grades 10 – 12. Through pattern, texture, shadow and meditative mark making, each work in the exhibition inspires quiet reflection and close looking. This exhibition has been organized in collaboration with Artists for Kids Studio Art Program, as part of Griffin Art Project’s newly launched Youth Mentorship Program.
2019
Join artist Sierra Tasi Baker to see the work she has made while in residence at Griffin.
Decolonizing Design is a body of work relating to the built environment and the public realm. Sierra will use the studio space at GAP to further develop content explored in her Sustainable Urbanism Masters Thesis from University College London on “Decolonizing Consultation.” The space will be used to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and the testing of new ideas.
Join Mary Tasi and Wade Baker for a presentation and discussion on their journey of the cultural research and the book they co-authored, The Hidden Journals (published 2015, revised edition 2018). The research has focused on the lost narratives of the Captain Vancouver era through an Indigenous perspective, and the findings of the high level trading and personal relationships that occurred, through primary archival research and oral Indigenous knowledge.
Join us for an evening of discussion with senior private and public collectors based in Alberta, regarding their support of the work and artists in the exhibition MONSOON, and the broader collecting scene in Alberta.
Building on one of Griffin Art Project’s mandates to make privately held art collections accessible to the public, this new and ongoing series is presented in partnership with the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver.
Join artist Sara-Jeanne Bourget to see the work she has made while in residence at Griffin, and for an intimate artist talk in the studio.
Join Lam Wong, recent artist-in-residence, for a presentation and discussion on his work, specifically his installation in the exhibition Person/ne at Griffin Art Projects, and accompanying series of tea ceremony performances.
Lam Wong is a contemporary artist, designer and curator based in Vancouver, BC. His interest is primarily rooted in regional West Coast art history, with an emphasis on the development of painting and its avant-garde narrative. Wong’s creative approach is often concerned with blending Eastern philosophies and challenging the notion of painting.
Cease Wyss and Katherine Ylitalo will discuss their work with gardens and Indigenous knowledge. Wyss will address North Vancouver’s local flora, her indigenous ties to the land, as well as her land-based work in relationship to her practice, while Ylitalo, a master gardener and curator, will discuss her work with The Butterfly Garden (1999), an art project by Mi’kmaq artist Mike MacDonald at the Walter Philips Gallery, Banff.
Join Mary Tasi and Wade Baker of Sky Spirit Consulting for a walking tour of artworks on the first section of the Spirit Trail, created in 2008 and 2009. We will visit Wade Baker’s stainless steel and red cedar sculpture, Gateway to Ancient Wisdom, and several curvilinear benches with art created by various Squamish Nation artists, located at the Mosquito Creek Marina oceanfront.
Please join us for an afternoon of participatory art making in the gallery related to the exhibition MONSOON for kids of all ages.
Join us for a presentation and discussion with Sara-Jeanne Bourget, current artist-in-residence. Bourget is the inaugural recipient of the Studio Residency Award, a new partnership between Griffin Art Projects and Emily Carr University.
Artists’ Roundtable with Robin Arsenault, Isla Burns, Katie Ohe, Evan Penny and curator Katherine Ylitalo from MONSOON.
Join us for a conversation between artist Katie Ohe and curator Katherine Ylitalo of MONSOON at 6pm before the exhibition’s opening reception, 7-9pm.
Please join us for an afternoon of participatory art making in the gallery. Kids of all ages are invited to create their own postcards inspired by historic works by the artist and calligrapher Léon Maurice Coupey (1864-1925) on view in the exhibition Person/ne.
Meet at 1pm in the parking lot of Capilano River Hatchery to join a guided hike with Griffin Art Projects artist-in-residence Lam Wong. Participants can expect a 20 minute, moderately difficult hike to the river, ending with a riverside tea ceremony and art installation by Wong.
Please join us for a day of discussion on themes related to political agency, personhood and care, in conjunction with the exhibition Person/ne with a group of international writers, researchers, curators and artists.
Griffin Art Projects founders Henning and Brigitte Freybe and Vancouver-based collector Bruce Wright, who support art in Vancouver and internationally, will discuss their histories of collecting and their decades-long relationships with artists in a moderated, round table format.
Wong is a Vancouver-based contemporary artist whose family background has revolved around the art of tea for over 15 generations. Situating traditions of Chinese style tea ceremony (gongfu cha) within his practice as a visual artist, Wong will offer tea to visitors as an opportunity for connection and contemplation within his work space in Griffin’s residency studio.
Talks with Janet Werner (Residency and Person/ne artist, Montreal) and Adrian Norvid (Residency Artist, Montreal)
Featured speakers include:
Ann Newdigate (Artist, Hornby Island) in conversation with Helen Marzolf (Artist and Curator, Victoria)
Mahdyar Jamshidi (Artist, Tehran) in conversation with Elham Puria Mehr (Curator, Vancouver)
Pierre Coupey (Artist, Vancouver) on the work of his grandfather, Léon Coupey, with Lisa Baldissera (Director, Griffin Art Projects)
Join us prior to the opening of Person/ne for a performance and tea ceremony by Lam Wong within his installation in the exhibition. Wong is a Vancouver-based contemporary artist whose family background has revolved around the art of tea for over 15 generations.
Travis O'Brian is an Anglican Priest, and rector of St. Barnabas Church in Victoria. He has a doctorate in philosophy from the Katholiek Universiteit, Leuven in Belgium, and wrote his dissertation on the work of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.
Please join us for Touch Change, an open studio and performance event with Griffin Art Project's current artist-in-residence Zoe Kreye. The day will be ever-evolving and include many participants.
In conjunction with the exhibition the poets have always preceded, Griffin Art Projects and The Capilano Review have teamed up to host a Poets Theatre Workshop with Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian.
San Francisco-based writers Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian will be in Vancouver for two days to lead a brief, but intense course in Poets Theatre that will culminate in a live performance on Sunday, March 10 within the exhibition.
Join Griffin Art Projects Residency Artists Mahdyar Jamshidi and Zoe Kreye, independent curator Elham Puriya Mehr and senior Canadian painter Landon Mackenzie for presentations and discussion on embodied research and the interdisciplinary nature of creating methods for navigating experience, examining ideas of worldmaking in geo-political, social, sensory and psychic realms.
Join us for an evening with Artist Mahdyar Jamshidi as he presents “I Am Here”.
“I Am Here” is a continuous collective art project that concentrates on challenging the various notions of the “center.” The project took place in three stages in Iran.
2018
Please join us for a public reading group and discussion led by Griffin’s Curatorial Assistants, Mitra Kazemi and Bahar Mohazabinia.
The works in Griffin Art Projects’ current exhibition, Flower Petal Tongues, are united by their relation to performance and performativity, either as text, documentation, or objects. In conjunction with the central themes of the exhibition, which highlight spectatorship, durational viewing, and object-to-body relations, we will read from the chapter ‘The Young-Girl as Technique of the Self’ in Preliminary Materials For a Theory of the Young-Girl by Tiqqun.
Griffin Art Projects is pleased to present our fall exhibition, Flower Petal Tongues, curated by RBC Senior Curator Corrie Jackson.
The exhibition presents work resulting from or inducing the action of performance, either as text, documentation, or objects.
Join us for the final day of our current exhibition zero, ground, for a set of performative lectures by local artists, Randy Lee Cutler and Marina Roy.
While the primary concerns of the exhibition pivot around figure-ground relations and the potential of blackness as a formal negation, Cutler and Roy will approach these theoretical ideas in a literal sense by considering two potent black substances found in the ground.
Guadalupe Martinez will respond to the exhibition through a performative action that animates the landscape surrounding the gallery space, its materiality, and the silent connections that are established, disrupted, and evoked through the artistic narrative of the show.
Join exhibition curator Lee Plested for a presentation on these early, career making works by Frank Stella and their subsequent realization in the Gemini editioned lithographs featured in the current exhibition. Plested will discuss the historical influences on Stella’s mechanical approach to painting, arguing for the social potential of these otherwise formalist works.
Join Artist-in-Residence Steven Cottingham and Programs Coordinator Laurie White for a reading and discussion.
In Zeros and Ones, feminist scholar Sadie Plant considers how the digital binary has extended across Western cosmology to characterise the world as a relation between activity and passivity.
Join zero, ground curator, Lee Plested for a tour of the exhibition.
zero, ground brings together a range of modern and contemporary works by international artists that investigate the potential of darkness and the monochrome.
Join artist Lam Wong for an intercultural tea gathering and conversation exploring the works in zero, ground. Lam is a contemporary painter, designer and scholar of Eastern philosophies whose family background has revolved around the art of tea for over 15 generations.
Join Curatorial Assistants Bahar Mohazabnia and Mitra Kazemi for a tour of the exhibition in Farsi.
Join artist Denzil Hurley for an artist talk and discussion on his series of Glyph paintings on display in zero, ground. In this series, monochrome canvasses are repeatedly layered with paint that is then partially scraped off to create tears and ruptures through their textured surfaces.
Join Amber Frid-Jimenez and T’ai Smith as they discuss Frid-Jimenez’s work in the exhibition, Burning Ballet Méchanique. The piece’s title refers to the 1924 experimental film Ballet Méchanique by artist Fernand Léger and filmmaker Dudley Murphy.
In celebration of International Earth Day, Griffin Art Projects presents a series of afternoon events reflecting on the neighboring Mackay Creek wetland, directly behind the gallery, and our collective responsibility for its protection. We encourage you to come and contemplate this important geographic site through a range of artistic events.
Please join us on Friday, March 23, at 7:30pm, for a studio based presentation of our current Artist in Residence, Mario Asef. Asef will be screening recent work Cenit, in dialogue with sculptural gestures and various publications.
Share an artful afternoon together with painter and educator Julie Pappajohn through the extraordinary art works of the exhibition Modernism in Iran. Join a lively discussion and engaging activities, including a fun, interactive mixed media art project.
Please join us for guided tours with curator Pantea Haghighi in both English and Farsi, to learn more about the works in Modernism in Iran. From 1958 – 1978, Iranian cultural practices underwent a dramatic transformation, signaling widespread and diverse approaches to conveying contemporary Iranian experiences.
2017
For the last thirty years, Vancouver artist Oraf Orafsson has worked in film, video, performance, and installation. Performing across Canada and the US, Orafsson’s projects have addressed postwar politics, oppositional cultural movements, and AIDS activism. He will present a new performance, Burnt Offering, in conjunction with our current exhibition, Civilization (inverted).
We are proud to host two distinguished local designers for a two day presentation of their new work at the gallery. Please join us on Friday evening for Bubbles and Beats with DJ Quest, or all day Saturday, and get your hands on some amazing local design.
Join us in launching two new publications which document the exhibitions Woosh and Surrogates, curated by Helga Pakasaar. These first exhibitions hosted by the gallery, and drawn entirely from private collections, display the remarkable, museum quality works collected locally.
As a final part of her residency at Griffin Art Projects, T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss led participants on a walk along the Spirit Trail and shared stories and cultural information about the Skwxwu7mesh peoples as well as incorporated her knowledge about local indigenous plants and their uses. The walk was accompanied with local indigenous iced tea that Cease Wyss prepared to carry on the journey.
Please join us at Griffin Art Projects for a conversation on the work of our spring artist in residence, Michael Bauer. We will present this public conversation between Michael Bauer and GAP Director Lee Plested on Saturday, April 22, 3pm.
The discussion will centre around Bauer’s influences, approach to painting and the evolution of his pictorial language over the last 20 years.
Griffin Art Projects is happy to present a panel on the life and work of Lewis Baltz. Collectors Claudia Beck, Vancouver, and David Knaus, Palm Springs, will be joined by Vancouver artist Christos Dikeakos for a lively afternoon discussion.
Inspired by the materialist subject of Lewis Baltz’s photographic investigations and responding to the gallery’s mandate to present private collections, local artists Zoe Kreye and Guadalupe Martinez will host a Saturday gathering.
2016
Marian Penner Bancroft has been a practicing artist for over thirty years. In addition to her photography, Penner Bancroft’s practice has included text, sound, drawing, sculpture, and video work.
Michael Morris has been an integral figure in the development of Vancouver’s artistic character. During his studies in London, the influence of Fluxus left a lasting impact on the artist.
It’s the ‘place to be’ for anyone with a passion for the arts, this annual awards gala recognizes and honours distinguished North Shore artists, provides funding support to local artists, and fund raises to sustain the Fund for the Arts on the North Shore (FANS) and its continuing support for the creative community.
Featuring an essay by curator Patrik Andersson, NO BIG PICTURE illuminates the work of Vancouver artist Enn Erisalu through a series of personal and aesthetic lenses. Drawing works from the collection of Erisalu and his partner and gallerist, Ilana Aloni, the exhibition presents the work of a dynamic and experimental painter in a conversation with the art, communities, and histories he lived with.
Please join curator Patrik Andersson for a tour of our current exhibition NO BIG PICTURE: The Personal Art of Enn Erisalu and Ilana Aloni.
NO BIG PICTURE: The Personal Art of Enn Erisalu and Ilana Aloni presents a survey of the artist Enn Erisalu (1943-2005). This exhibition does not give us a “big picture” of Erisalu’s practice, but offers a series of filters to view the extra-ordinary work.
In a series of in-the-moment-moments Charlene Vickers and Chad MacQuarrie will activate the gallery space using improvised sound, vocals, and performed action followed by a music set of guitar and electronics. Things to see and hear could include a Jeff Wall portal, a megaphone tutorial, invisible painting making and meditations between guitar and Kaosillator Pad.
Griffin Art Projects and Royal Bank Collection are coming together to present an intimate discussion with RBC Assistant Curator Corrie Jackson and the collectors from our current exhibition, Surrogates.
Please join Helga Pakasaar this coming Tuesday, for a tour of this inaugural exhibition.
2015
The Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver will meet at Griffin Art Projects for a tour of our inaugural exhibition.
Griffin Art Projects is a new art space in North Vancouver that showcases contemporary art exhibitions, primarily from private collections.