From new public art installations to gallery and museum exhibitions, in-stores and more – there is a plethora of offerings on view this summer. Here’s a selection that I recommend checking out while you can:

INTO THE WILD AT FJÄLLRAVEN | ON NOW TO AUGUST 9TH, 2024

There’s a nature-themed group exhibition taking place at Swedish outfitters, Fjällraven, featuring 25 local artists and over 50 works of art. A curatorial debut from Germany-based artist, Sean Alistair, who issued an open call for artist submissions on Instagram. The accepted artworks fit the theme and physical space of the store, without considering artists’ CVs or social media following. As a result, participating artists range from unknown to more widely exhibited local artists; the artworks span mediums from painting to collage, textile and photography. “This show is about supporting local emerging artists by lowering as many barriers as possible and bringing people together to help build a sense of community,” says Alistair. “As a Queer and disabled Outsider Artist, I am constantly facing barriers, so it is my first priority, when possible, to be a part of the solution and not the problem.”

A few of the artists include: Jasper Berehulke, an oil painter who invites viewers to explore his reflections on the everyday, offering a unique perspective as a two-spirit and neurodivergent person who is committed to pushing the boundaries of queer Indigenous art; Jay Cabalu, whose intricate, pop-art inspired portraits are 100% hand-cut collage, created without the use of paint or digital renderings; Danielle Bobier, a painter whose practice finds interest in elements of material, abstraction, geometry, and the natural world; and Evan Matchett-Wong, a self-taught hand embroidery artist focusing on the male form and the occult as imagined through a Chinese and Indigenous lens.

“What I find exciting is having a true variety of personal experiences and narratives being told and for all voices to be heard, regardless if they are marginalized or not,” Alistair says. “By doing so, we find common ground with one another. I think nature is the perfect theme to facilitate this because it has and will inspire all of us; it is the great equalizer.”

All artworks are originals, and exhibiting artists retain 100% of their sales. View the exhibition during store hours, until Friday, August 9th: Monday-Saturday from 10am-6pm; Sundays from 11am-5pm.

TRAPP PROJECTS’ KALENDARIUM AT EUGENE CHOO | UNTIL MAY 2025

This summer, the expertly curated Main Street clothing store is perfectly paired with art, via the latest curatorial project from Patrik Andersson’s Trapp Projects, Kalendarium, featuring a monthly, rotating artwork hung behind the sales counter at Eugene Choo. This space had previously been occupied by a large calendar designed by Massimo Vignelli for Charles Stendig in 1966 (you know the one).

The project kicked off earlier this summer, in June, with the Andersson-selected work, Kolga (2023) by Lotta Antonsson, a Berlin-based Swedish artist he has worked with over the years, and who was part of the initial conversations for Kalendarium. Andersson recounts: “About ten years ago when Lotta was in town, we were in Eugene Choo talking to [owner] Kildare and goofed around with the idea of doing a show of her work in the store. When Kildare and his sister first opened their store, they used to show emerging artists, such as Julie Morstad, and I always loved the casual non-pretentious aspect of them. In this sense, this project is an extension of those earlier conversations and ideas.”

While only one work is on view each month up until May 2025, the project’s concept reads like a group exhibition. The next announced artist is Kelowna-based Samuel Roy-Bois; but as for the future lineup, the process will be spontaneous rather than predetermined. For Andersson, who recently closed his physical Trapp Projects space on East 1st Ave, the project allows him to share work he finds both intellectually and visually engaging with a new audience, one that is “a little less predictable than the one I normally present to in galleries and museums.” Says Andersson, “I have always seen Trapp as a nomadic and flexible curatorial project and in this sense, [Kalendarium] is a way for me to reassert this after having operated a more traditional looking gallery space for five years down the street from Eugene Choo.”

Eugene Choo is open seven days a week for your shopping and viewing pleasure. Regular hours are Sunday to Thursday from 12-5pm; Friday to Saturday from 11am-5pm.

ARCHITECTURE TOURS + SPECIAL TOM THOMSON EXHIBITION AT AUDAIN ART MUSEUM

Whistler’s Audain Art Museum has recently launched private guided architecture tours exploring the award-winning museum, designed by Vancouver’s Patkau Architects, which opened to the public in 2016. Nestled among the forest, with an exterior clad in dark metal, the design was shaped to house permanent and temporary exhibitions alike, while also addressing the environmental challenges that exist in Whistler (40-feet of annual accumulated snowfall, and the fact that the museum is located within the floodplain of nearby Fitzsimmons Creek).

During the tour, museum staff (or experienced docents) lead you and your group through the museum’s stunning, 56,000-square-foot space for a behind-the-scenes, insider’s view into the building’s design and purpose-built structure. On a recent inaugural tour with AAM’s Director & Chief Curator, Dr. Curtis Collins, and David Shone (of Patkau Architects and Principal Architect on the AAM), the experience included the back of house design, operational spaces like art storage, offices and boardroom, as well as a ride in the freight elevator, offering insights into details about the building, materials, thought, care and reasoning behind the design, contributing to the AAM’s reputation as a world-class museum.

Tours are $150 per group plus admission. Book a private architecture tour here.

Because of Audain Art Museum’s adherence to the most stringent rules around displaying works of art (“Level AA”, according to the Canadian Conservation Institute) — climate control, lighting, how artwork moves into and around the museum – the AAM is able to present exhibitions of art from around the world, such as the newly opened special exhibition, Tom Thomson: North Star. The exhibition – the largest ever displayed – features over one hundred landscape paintings from one of Canada’s most iconic artists. Dr. Curtis Collins, Director & Chief Curator of the Audain Art Museum, says, “North Star is the most important historical exhibition that the AAM has hosted since opening to the public in 2016. Visitors to the Museum will marvel at Thomson’s ability to evoke the ruggedness of Ontario’s northern lakefronts, which is a perfect compliment to our superlative collection of Emily Carr paintings that capture British Columbia’s towering forests.” The exhibition is organized and circulated by Ontario’s McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

Tom Thomson: North Star is on view now through October 14th, 2024. Regular hours are Thursday to Sunday from 11am-6pm. Adult admission starts at $22.

THE PROP HOUSE AT GRIFFIN ART PROJECTS | THROUGH AUGUST 18TH

Visit North Vancouver’s Griffin Art Projects for an exhibition celebrating Mount Pleasant Furniture – a prop house wonderland for film, television, stage and art communities – through the works of six Vancouver-based artists. Curated by artist Paul Wong and Griffin Art Projects’ Director, Lisa Baldissera, A Prop House: A Collection of One Million Objects highlights the impacts of development and gentrification on Vancouver and on the city’s arts and culture sectors. The exhibition re-imagines a selection of objects from Mount Pleasant Furniture through the eyes of of artists Cathy Busby, Germaine Koh, Jason Payne, Jay Senetchko, Charlene Vickers, Parvin Peivandi, and Bagua Artist Association, who have each created a new installation for the exhibition, bringing a bit of MPF’s diverse collection of over one million antiques and vintage objects, including furnishings, lighting, art, paintings, textiles, sculptures, and figurines, into the gallery setting.

Two components of the exhibition extend beyond the gallery: Paul Wong has a video screening on grunt gallery’s Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen and in the window at Mount Pleasant Furniture House is an installation by D.A. Shaffer.

Gallery hours are Friday to Sunday, from 12–5pm, and admission is free.

KELLY LYCAN: THE FIREPLACE AT BURNABY ART GALLERY | UNTIL AUGUST 25TH, 2024

Currently on view at Burnaby Art Gallery is The Fireplace, a solo exhibition by photo-based installation artist, Kelly Lycan. The site-specific works in the exhibition draw on Lycan’s longstanding inquiry of repurposed and re-contextualized interiors, objects and materials. From the Burnaby Art Gallery: “The Fireplace looks at a host of occupants in the once-residential space of the Burnaby Art Gallery, mediating between the world of objects and the absence of its former residents. Lycan’s works reference past furniture, decorations and styles that have passed through the house along with its people. Offering new glimpses of the gallery/home through reconfiguration and drawing on her long history as a set decorator, The Fireplace is the staging of a home through the mythical conflation of time periods and stories, set in the present day.”

Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday, from 10am-4:30pm; Weekends, from 12-5pm. Admission is a suggested donation of $5.

BARD ON THE BEACH | PERFORMANCES THROUGH SEPTEMBER 21ST, 2024

The 2024 season of Bard on the Beach, Western Canada’s largest not-for-profit Shakespeare Festival, is a landmark summertime event. For a wildly entertaining evening on the beach, go see Bard’s Twelfth Night, adapted and directed by Diana Donnelly. It’s hilarious, fun, full of surprises, and the performances are superb. A highlight is the original music by local musician and composer, Veda Hille, transporting audiences to the quasi-fictional land of Illyria, where the story takes place. Hille sets music to Shakespeare’s lyrics, drawing on inspirations rooted in punk, English folk style, with a hint of New Wave and opera. Visit Bard’s website for details on all performances and tickets (from $30 for regular shows).

HANK WILLIS THOMAS AT VANCOUVER ART GALLERY OFFSITE | THROUGH APRIL 27TH, 2025

Internationally recognized Brooklyn-based conceptual artist, Hank Willis Thomas, is behind a shiny public artwork for Offsite, organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery. Curated by Eva Respini, Deputy Director & Director of Curatorial Programs, the installation features three of Thomas’ polished stainless-steel sculptures — “disembodied hand gestures that evoke gestures of protest, care and exaltation” — shown together for the first time. The artist is known for his investigation of themes relating to mass media, racial identity, and consumerism, often incorporating symbols and imagery from American pop culture into his work, which spans photography, sculpture, installation and public art. From the Vancouver Art Gallery: “Thomas has increasingly made work for the public realm, creating large-scale outdoor sculptures and monuments. His public sculptures often feature an isolated gesture from a photograph or circulated image, bringing a sense of intimacy to the public sphere.”

NEW PUBLIC ARTWORK BY DOUGLAS COUPLAND | BURNABY

Joining a handful of public artworks in Burnaby’s Beresford Art Walk near Metrotown is 21st Century Rock Garden by renowned artist and author, Douglas Coupland. The installation was still in progress during our first look, but tall, colourful columns iconic of Coupland’s art practice were already in place, juxtaposed with carefully positioned basalt boulders and large polished jade pieces. Some were even carved flat, creating a place for rest or conversation. The artwork is located in front of a (no surprise) new development by Intracorp. Lucky residents!