The Lower Mainland has five new art show openings that we think are worthy of your attentions this month so we’ve detailed and mapped them out in the hope you’ll make a crawl of it…

MONUMENTAL JINGLE | Anishinaabe artists and collaborators Charlene Vickers and Maria Hupfield are bringing their show, Jingles and Sounds for Speaking to Our Grandmothers, to Fazakas Gallery this month. The title comes from a series of performances during the Seattle Art Fair last August. We were there on opening night when the artists performed this work, moving through the crowd. Central to the performance was a monumental jingle cone made of cardboard and paper, held up from either end by the artists and used as megaphone to communicate and converse. The cone references the rows of metal cones worn in Anishinaabe women’s jingle dress dancing that dangle from the dresses—and jingle. The exhibition at Fazakas combines documentation from the performances and the jingle cone, as well as new drawings made from the original performance costumes.
FRI, FEB. 1 | 6-8PM | ON UNTIL MAR 16 | FAZAKAS GALLERY

PHOTOGRAPHY | Take the SeaBus to North Van for The Polygon Gallery’s dust-themed exhibition, A Handful of Dust. Curated by London-based curator/critic David Campany, the exhibition features photographs spanning the last 100 years. Artists include photography legends like Brassaï and Walker Evans, renowned artists—historical and contemporary—such as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Ed Ruscha, and Jeff Wall. Entry to the gallery during regular hours is by donation.
THU, FEB. 7 | 8-10PM | ON UNTIL APR 28 | THE POLYGON GALLERY

REOPENING | Long-standing commercial contemporary art gallery, Catriona Jeffries, reopens in a new space this month, and they’re doing things differently for their inaugural exhibition, Unexplained Parade. It’ll be a group show featuring 42 artists—21 gallery artists who were each invited to select an artist, past or present. We’re looking forward to seeing the new location, a former workshop for Pilkington Metal Marine, renovated by Patkau Architects (think Polygon Gallery, Audain Art Museum). It’ll be a show to revisit over the next months as works change and the exhibition unfolds.
SAT, FEB. 9 | 2-6PM | ON UNTIL MAY 11 | CATRIONA JEFFRIES

COMMUNITY PROJECT | Hop on the Canada Line to the Richmond Art Gallery to see Adad Hannah’s new work, The Decameron Retold. It’s a series of video tableaux vivants, videos with no action, no sound. Commissioned by the Richmond Art Gallery, the exhibition is based on a 14th-century literary work, The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio. For the exhibition, Hannah worked with Richmond community members, in front of and behind the camera, and incorporated participants’ local stories. If this is anything like Hannah’s previous projects, we can expect to experience compelling and highly cinematic scenes.
SAT, FEB. 9 | 2-5PM | ON UNTIL APR. 20 | RICHMOND ART GALLERY

SAMSON YOUNG | Centre A presents It’s Heaven Over There, a solo show by Hong Kong sound artist/composer Samson Young. The exhibition is based on Young’s research on Won Alexander Cumyow, an early Chinese Canadian public servant and community leader and the first person of Chinese descent born in Canada in 1861. The show includes new works on paper, a music video, and archival materials, all set in Centre A’s renovated gallery space in the Sun Wah Centre in Chinatown. Quite the art star internationally, his career skyrocketed after winning a big award at Art Basel Hong Kong in 2015. This will be Young’s first solo show in Canada. Doubly celebrations on opening night Feb. 23 as Centre A marks its 20th anniversary! Visit their Facebook page for details.
SAT, FEB. 23 | 7-9PM | ON UNTIL JUN 1 | CENTRE A