Skin Contact

Opening May 31st
May 31st - July 2024

The Art Shop presents, SKIN CONTACT, a group show that explores the tangible yet transient ways we interact with each other and the world. Finding inspiration in the process of skin contact wine, where winemakers allow the grapes’ skin to macerate with its juices for a prolonged period of time, and the bonding act of skin to skin contact - the show reflects the many possible relationships between the body and the artwork. 

Works in SKIN CONTACT resonate with the process of becoming, as our bodies are a tangible and physical representation of the passing of time. Offering different perspectives on how we understand ourselves and our bodies, the exhibit aims to find parallels with processes of fermentation where the body is ever changing and growing with the environment it is surrounded by. 

Participating Artists: Ana Diab, Hillary Webb, Sara Khan, Ava Ross, Kira Buro, Rydel Cerezo, Wendy Hanlon, and Danya Gorodetsky

Curated By Ysabel Gana

Mirrored Hearts

Opening March 1st
March 2nd - April 14th 2024

Sophia Boutsaki’s show, Mirrored Hearts, aims to explore the exchange of meaning within our social tapestry. Through multiple mediums, including stained glass, metal sculptures, delicate drawings, and intimately scaled paintings, the exhibition contemplates relationships, intimacy, distance, memory, and childhood. 

Boutsakis employs repeated motifs in each work that reference architectural barricades like railings, fences, and window coverings, traditionally used to both protect and decorate spaces. Elements taken from these reference architectural sources are extracted to become symbols within themselves. Hearts, diamonds, stars, butterflies, bows and flowers hold their own context and narrative, suggesting themes of love, nurturement, growth and strength.

Formally, Boutsakis navigates the tension between high art and hobbyist craft, employing self-taught, amateur fabrication techniques and low brow materials such as soldering, welding, stained glass, steel rod, galvanized wire, and chain. Conceptually, the artist offers a nuanced exploration of how symbols and aesthetics contribute to the construction of identity, particularly how decoration and beautification are associated with the performance of gender and femininity.

PARALLEL//LANDSCAPES

The Art Shop presents PARALLEL// LANDSCAPES, a group show that investigates the formed connections to our lived environment. The exhibiting artists explore different approaches to landscape and art, playing with, and departing from it’s conventions. Experimenting with the immersive quality found in landscapes as an artistic category, each work offers distinct perspectives on how the artists relate to their chosen spaces. By visual representations or the involvement of the environment itself in the process of the work, each piece creates contained worlds which aim to intrigue the curiosity of the viewer, to imagine themselves in these spaces, and what lies beyond them. 

We would like to acknowledge that The Art Shop operates on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, we are grateful to be able to live and work on this land.

Participating Artists: Mika Abele, Dana Belcourt, Ben Evely, Susan Jessop, Sidney Gordon and Madeleine Keen, Amanda Niekamp, Logan Thackray

Familiar Faces

Opening May 19, 7:00-9:00
May 20th - July 1st 2023

The Art Shop presents a new group exhibition of local emerging artists, Familiar Faces, exploring portraits as a point of immediate and profound connection. Each participating artist presents their unique interpretation of portraiture, from capturing the emotions held in a figure to revealing a personal story through a smile or gaze.

As people, we continuously search for familiar faces in our surroundings, whether as a source of comfort or curiosity. We might find ourselves seeking out the recognizable, finding the contours of a body in a stone, or discovering a friendly face in the bark of a tree.

Through this show, we aim to highlight the individual beauty of those around us through the inclusion of different mediums and styles of contemporary portraiture. Familiar Faces invites the viewer to find moments of reflection and appreciate the value of human connection. 

Participating Artists:

Risa Witten, Mads, Elisa Malo, Merlin Boissonneault, Wendy Hanlon, Sophia Boutsakis, Cole Bazin, Han Wang, Logan Kenler

SAY HI

Opening March 31st, 7:00-9:00
Weekends Only, April 1-20, 12:00-4:00

Alison Fast's new body of work reflects a deep connection to familiar domestic objects, which she uses as inspiration to create work that conveys feelings of comfort, peace, and playfulness. Through her use of various forms and surfaces, Fast seeks to represent the spaces we inhabit and the emotions we feel within them. One of her unique approaches is incorporating painting into her ceramic work, allowing it to move across surfaces and take on new forms.

Drawing inspiration from everyday experiences, particularly those related to motherhood and children's play, Fast explores the relationship between action, materials, and imagery. By paying close attention to the subtle nuances of everyday moments and objects, she invites the viewer to find meaning in the spaces between these elements, encouraging us to engage with our own lived experiences and recognize the beauty and potential for expression in the world around us

LUCK, COINCIDENCE, CHANCE

Opening Friday Feb 3rd, 7-9pm
Weekends only, Feb 3-March 12

The Art Shop presents Luck, Coincidence, Chance, a group show that aims to explore the profound beauty of life’s serendipitous moments. The participating artists reflect on the curatorial theme of the show by involving their practice in somewhat mystical ideas - forces beyond our understanding - and trusting that they might highlight a unique perspective of their work.

All encounters with Luck, Coincidence or Chance, are personal and special, built upon the layering of a seemingly infinite series of past moments and the individual lens through which we view their culmination. Each encounter is wondrous in its singularity. While impossible to replicate or force into existence, they are more common than we might think. The artists of Luck, Coincidence, Chance, attempt to appreciate the presence of these moments by incorporating their influence into works of art.

The show creates a space to give meaning to and appreciate what may seem random. Each artist’s work preserves an encounter with Luck, Coincidence or Chance, much like an insect in amber, allowing us to peer inside the uniquely intricate tangle of circumstances that brought it to life.

GLITTER IN YOUR EYES

Opening Wednesday Nov 30th, 7-9pm
Weekends only, 11-4pm

Self-taught artist, Isabelle Grue Lee turns to collage as a painter to brushstrokes, using her trained eye in the appreciation of color and texture to recontextualize sourced fragments of textiles, and architectural or natural elements into new compositions. The emphasis on Isabelle’s process aims to demonstrate the value of courage and of trusting your intuition.

Drawing inspiration from unrestricted forms of self-expression, Isabelle lets go of parameters and external standards to take pleasure in the playfulness of creation, resulting in abstracted, unexpected, and stunning images. Although the outcome is up to chance, through trial and error Isabelle’s creative process involves trusting her initial visceral reaction to the materials in her assemblages. Through selecting and arranging, she discovers moments of epiphany when elements in her work reveal a beautiful tension and relation to each other. Isabelle’s collages demonstrate her unquestionable and unique eye for shadow, light, and volume. 

GLITTER IN YOUR EYES is Isabelle Grue Lee’s first solo show and marks the beginning of a long journey dedicated to and full of art.

ELEVATOR MUSIC

Opening Friday November 4th, 7-9pm
Weekends only Nov 4th-20th

Curated by Jill Taylor

Ketty Zhang’s solo show features a collection of new works across different media, centering around the theme of elevators.

The elevator sits at the intersection of a few topics the artist is interested in: corporate culture, transience, transition, and day-to-day spaces and materials. The elevator as a space brings out a layered sentiment, as it is the site for different types of interactions: chance encounters, small talk, awkward silence, and elevator pitches. For some, it might trigger certain psychological responses, like claustrophobia, germophobia, or even a kinky obsession with surrendering control in such a  confined, surveilled place. 

It is a “space within a space” as described by Michel Foucault - an urban limbo with its own unspoken rules as we head to our destination. As we emerge from the elevator, our social roles change; we become an employee, a customer, a student, a parent, a patient. Parts of our identity that were present before the ride become less apparent as the doors close. This exhibition explores multiple facets of the human psyche as they relate to the elevator as a site of introspection, fantasy, and change.

REASSESSING EXCESS

Opening Friday October 7th, 7-9pm
Weekends only October 8th-23rd

Leftover house paint, colour swatches, stir sticks, fabric off cuts, collage material stowed away and forgotten about, paint at the bottom of the yoghurt container: Remnants of a creative process.

Ben Evely’s solo show Reassessing Excess builds on an interest in repurposing materials which accumulate in a studio practice. Whether it be paint leftover after a mural project, fabric found in a thrift shop, or the canvas off cuts from larger works. 

Evely explores possibilities in making creative use of the excess that exists around us, rethinking the value of materials, and finding ways of making unusual compositions.

ABOUT

We are thrilled to have found a space within VMF’s City Centre Artist Lodge. Our purpose and values perfectly align with this incredible space that has been converted from an iconic motel to an epicentre of creativity, bringing art to people and people to art in an accessible way.  

We have opened our doors to the public on the weekends presenting TAS Artists and fellow guest creatives, hoping our presence will become an entry point into supporting local artists by creating connections through a series of mini shows.

Having a dedicated space on the traditional unceeded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓wətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations is a true privilege, but it also comes with great responsibility. We will work hard to bring art to the people in a meaningful, accessible and enjoyable way, and keep supporting the emerging art community.