The next month is an exciting time in the local art scene with plenty of new and interesting openings that are well worth checking out. Make your way around to the different galleries using this map as your guide…

MADELAINE MONGEY & L. KENLER | Dusty Fingers & Dusty Shoes is an exhibition of ceramics, textiles, and objects by Madelaine Mongey and L. Kenler. There are installations of large ceramic sculptural heads by Logan Kenler in dialogue with quilts and quilt coats by Lindsey Kenler, ceramic pots, crystal holders and a stoneware chain by Mongey. Save the date, the closing reception, is on Dec. 6th from 6pm-12am. Slice of Life houses a shop, gallery, artist studios (including Mongey’s) and hosts events and workshops. Check out their calendar for upcoming events like the Holiday Market & Slice Swap Dec 7th -15th (shop local vendors in the gallery, swap clothing and art supplies in the solarium), Life Drawing sessions, and more. Great space!

HANK BULL | A solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Hank Bull, including shadow installation, paintings, and photographs. Included in the exhibition is a series of Bull’s cardboard box paintings/photographs—painted cardboard boxes, removed of their functionality and transformed into sculptures or flattened and framed as paintings, or photographed. Missed the artist talk? Luckily you can catch it here, where the artist talks about form, in art history and in his own practice.

GABI DAO | An installation of new work at grunt gallery by Gabi Dao featuring a video, sculpture, and sound work, the result of research along the Mekong Delta and her family’s history. Watch the 25-minute video, coco means ghost, narrated by a ghost in the form of a coconut! Following the video, sculptures of beaded curtains and glass silhouettes play excerpts from “Foreign Accent Improvement” cassettes that Dao’s parents used in the 1980s.

RYAN QUAST / KATE METTEN / MOLLIE BURKE | Three-in-one here at Burrard Arts Foundation. Ryan Quast’s latest paint sculptures are a continuation of his work, using his time-consuming and laborious technique of layering paint only to make mundane objects. There are stacks of Styrofoam cups, a plastic spoon in a take-out container, a plunger, rather than objects we’d usually imagine putting on display. Kate Metten’s newest Thinking Eye series, produced as part of her residency at BAF, are precise, geometric, grid paintings that focus on the medium itself. And in The Garage, a street-facing exhibition space, is an installation by Mollie Burke. While a total visual contrast from the precise, meticulous work in the gallery, Burke’s Unfolded also explores visual perception, by playing with flatness and three-dimensional space.

EVANN SIEBENS | An exhibition of recent work including photographic collages and video documentation of her performance Gesture by Number. This piece was premiered at A Performance Affair, a performance art art fair, which took place in a couple months ago in Brussels. The fair attempted to determine protocol on what exactly an art collector gets when they purchase a performance. (A great related article, mentioning Evann’s work, was recently published in the New York Times.) The exhibition coincides with the launch of Evann’s book, The Indexical, Alphabetized, Mediated Archival Dance-a-Thon!, an alphabet of gestures, available at the gallery. The location is in Wil Aballe Art Project’s pop-up gallery, a huge space, two doors over from the regular gallery, which is showing paintings by Brian Kokoska, also worth checking out.

GARDEN IN THE MACHINE | A group show of new and recent work examining computer technology and nature through digital art at Surrey Art Gallery. The exhibition features work by six artists, Faisal Anwar, Helma Sawatzky, Leila Sujir, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun and Paisley Smith (who’s VR component can be experienced on Thursdays from 3-7PM), and Robert Youds. The exhibition marks the 20th anniversary of TechLab, a dedicated venue for the production and presentation of digital art, within the gallery.

CINDY SHERMAN | This is the first retrospective of Cindy Sherman’s work in Canada in 20 years, with works from each of the artist’s major series, plus new and rarely seen material. Since the mid 1970s, renowned artist Cindy Sherman has photographed herself in different guises, exploring different identities. A highlight, in this important exhibition, is the Untitled Film Stills (1977-80) series, exhibited in its entirety—70 works in which Sherman explores female stereotypes in film, referencing B movies from the 1950s, and created to mimic cheap publicity prints. Don’t miss this one. Tip: The Vancouver Art Gallery is open until 9PM the first Friday of each month and on Tuesdays, where admission is by donation from 5-9PM.