Here are five art shows currently on view – most lasting well into the New Year, and some further afield but well worth the journey – to visit right now and over the weeks ahead…

RISE: Sandeep Johal and Sara Khan, through November 26th

There are only a handful of days remaining to step into a fantastical world of whimsical characters drawing on the strength of women that is RISE, a collaborative exhibition between Sandeep Johal and Sara Khan, on view at the Art Gallery at Evergreen (Coquitlam) until Sunday, November 26th.

Curated by AGE’s Katherine Dennis, for RISE Johal and Khan had the opportunity to draw from each other’s visual styles and vocabularies to create new works – including site-specific installations – that speak to each artists’ personal and cultural histories, and the overcoming of hardship, with the added shared lens of being mothers to young children.

On the gallery walls enclosing the exhibition is a mural depicting a blue serpent form in Johal’s graphic style, with line drawings of human figures in Khan’s more painterly style. Strings of small textile flags made from stitched-together trims and patterned fabrics overlaid with cut-out shapes, made by Johal, complement Khan’s nearly floor-to-ceiling hanging banners featuring larger-than-life anthropomorphic forms. There are also collections of smaller works, like collages and drawings. For Altar, a tree painted directly on the gallery wall, Khan has arranged ceramic sculptures of her lovingly called “weirdos” on small shelves among the branches, like fruit.

Although time is ticking on this exhibit, it’s still not to late to join Sirish Rao (co-founder of Indian Summer Festival and Director of Public Engagement and Learning at Vancouver Art Gallery) for a talk about RISE, happening at AGE on Thursday, November 23rd at 7pm. DETAILS. Regular gallery hours are Wednesday and Weekends, 12-5pm; Thursday and Friday, 12-6pm.

001, showing until December 3rd

Design and art come together at ADDITION, a distinctive new space in Yaletown, aiming to bring together the design and visual arts communities in a welcoming environment. The project is a collaboration between Andres Aramburu (formerly Inform Interiors, and co-founder of AREA Living in Shanghai), and Wil Aballe (founder of Wil Aballe Art Projects (WAAP)). Expect carefully curated secondary market consignments and exceptional design pieces combining craftsmanship, provenance, ingenuity, and ergonomic design.

“The intention throughout the process of developing the gallery is that we both felt we wanted to create a space where the art is more approachable and where the audience could be broader than what exists within the visual arts silo,” says Aballe. “Vancouver is a really creative city and it made sense to merge the dynamics and energies of the design community and the art community altogether.”

With ADDITION’s False Creek seawall location (formerly a gym), Aramburu knew that he had landed on the ideal spot to bring their vision to fruition, and immersed himself in redesigning and renovating the space into a gallery. The 638 Kinghorne Mews address provides the project with an ideal combination of proximity to Yaletown’s bustling activity and the feeling of secluded privacy.

Exhibitions will rotate for 5-8 weeks at a time. The first show, 001, features artwork by Anton Cu Unjieng, Lyse Lemieux, Charles Rea, and Alessandra Risi. Looking ahead, we can expect intimate and engaging events, such as artist talks, book launches, and specially curated experiences, as well as larger ones that fully utilize the 2,000 sqft waterfront patio, come springtime.

For now, add a stop at ADDITION to your next seawall stroll or ride, and save the date for their next exhibition, 002, opening on Sunday, December 3rd. Regular gallery hours are Thursday to Sunday, 10:30am-5:30pm.

In Cascades, through January 7, 2024

Described as “a scaffold of industrial steel joists sheathed with lengths of unfixed photographic films,” In Cascades is the installation by Lotus L. Kang currently showing at the Contemporary Art Gallery. The light-sensitive films (what the artist terms as “skins”) on display will continue to change over time. Other sculptures included also feature organic components that are durational. To best appreciate the installation, take a walk through the exhibition now, and then plan on returning in the New Year to see how time and environment has affected it.

You can also see Kang’s work adorning the CAG Nelson Street façade, as well as at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station. CAG’s regular gallery hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 12-6pm.

Kindred Tracings, through January 21, 2024

Over at the Burnaby Art Gallery, catch Kindred Tracings, a group show exploring language and lineage. The exhibit features four artists – Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich, Minahil Bukhari, Russna Kaur, and Michelle Sound – each presenting their own unique ways of working through their personal ancestral histories, and creating new languages through their artistic practices.

The artists also respond to the location’s historic architecture (BAG is situated in the Fairacres Mansion, built in 1911) and Century Gardens outdoors. For instance, Kaur pushes the constraints of the canvas by painting directly on the gallery walls; Bukhari’s delicate paper pulp sculpture is installed like a chandelier in the gallery’s most intimate space; and Sound, for whom language is tied to the plains of her ancestral communities, responds to the history of Deer Lake and its surrounding ecology.

The exhibition is curated by Burnaby Art Gallery Assistant Curator, Emily DundasOke. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday, 10am-4:30pm; Weekends, 12-5pm.

From Slander’s Brand, through February 4, 2024

The newest exhibition at The Polygon in North Vancouver is a three-artist show featuring work by Paris-based Hannah Darabi, Zurich-based Rachel Khedoori, and Vancouver-based, Ron Terada. The monumental works on view each respond to pivotal moments of historical transformation and trauma: the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Iraq War of 2003, and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Works on view include Darabi’s Enghelab Street, A Revolution through Books: Iran 1979–1983, a series of collected print materials from a brief moment of freedom in Iranian history; 325 paintings from Terada’s ongoing series of paintings taking news headlines related to the pandemic from The Verge website and painstakingly recreating them to resemble The New York Times, called TL;DR (Internet shorthand for “too long, didn’t read”); and Khedoori’s Untitled (Iraq Book Project) [2008 to 2010], an expansive work on the Iraq war.

The Polygon’s regular hours are Wednesday, Friday and Weekends, 10am-5pm; Thursday, 10am-9pm.