Arts and culture are integral to a city’s distinct personality and flair, which is why we're committed to connecting locals with their civic spaces through programming, events and partnerships.
Vancouver Civic Theatres looks to use its venues as gallery space to provide an opportunity for local visual artists and arts organizations to exhibit their work. These artists are selected through a call and jury process which occurs annually. The artists range from emerging and mid-career to more established artists. Our intention is for both artists and visitors to experience and share in the work, using art as a catalyst for individual and community engagement.
Exhibitions will be available for viewing during show times for ticket holders. There will also be opportunities to view the exhibitions without a ticket through our seasonal Visual Arts Open House.
Check back in spring of 2025 for next year's Call for Artists. Follow us on social media for announcements.
See the winter exhibit during the open house on February 15 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Winter Exhibition in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Lobbies
January 2025 to March 2025
Bronwyn McIvor - The Undiscovered Kitchen
bronwynmcivor.ca | @bronwynmcivor
The core of Bronwyn McIvor’s artistic practice is the tension between beauty and grotesquery, attraction and repulsion. In her oil paintings she transforms food and leftovers from daily life into something otherworldly and strange, revealing hidden detail and lush drama through her close examination.
Bronwyn’s appreciation of both classical still life and the visual drama of artists such as Caravaggio, Delacroix, and Géricault informs her paintings. In recent years she has made their work part of her own by stripping their paintings down to the bones of their composition, colour, and movement, and then constructing her own paintings atop this framework. Instead of grandiose mythological or historical paintings: the simple realm of the kitchen. By giving this mundane matter such weight and attention, she animates it with unexpected vitality; it becomes landscape, portrait, or strangely unrecognizable presences, making the viewer pause to appreciate the surreal beauties of everyday life.
Joy Munt - Rain, Steam, and Speed
joymunt.com | @enjoymunt
Joy’s main brush is a power sander. It allows Joy to approach her landscapes in the matter in which she perceives them, which is a beautiful world of construction, stasis, and deterioration and yet somehow polished and smooth. Joy’s paintings are an expression – a distillation – of the impressions made on her psyche by the landscapes around her, whether it be the prairies in which Joy grew up, the West coast of her adult years, or the short time she spent in a large Eastern metropolis.
Joy’s process is evident her art; it’s not something she tries to hide, use, and then discard, or disguise. The techniques and tools she employs – layers of pigment, sanding, scraping back, lettering – are there, exposed in the finished work.
The text she uses in her pieces are often found on, or inspired by the text visible on shipping containers, grain elevators, truck, trains; sometimes she uses randomly chosen numbers or letters chosen purely for what they bring to the piece graphically or compositionally.
Winter Exhibition in the ANNEX
January 2025 to April 2025
Kasumi Ramirez - Me in You, You in Me
Kasumi loves the process of creating and the surprise of something beautiful (or beautifully ugly) arising unexpectedly. She enjoys starting with a blank canvas, without drafts or plans. She revels in the amazement of colors, lines, textures, and all the elements coming together. When the harmony resonates with her, it gives her chills, and she deeply enjoys being in that state of mind. She invites whatever intuitively comes to her mind and body to take shape, trusting each action. If she is unsatisfied with the result, she views it as a gift that deepens her understanding of herself. Every moment is intimate and unrepeatable—and she loves that about creating, about life. Her creative process is a silent conversation with her inner being (though she sometimes sings a little loudly while painting). And now, with you, she hopes it becomes a vibrational dialogue between us.
Vancouver Community College - Jewellery Art and Design Graduates exhibit
Queen Elizabeth Theatre - Balcony Lobby
VCT’s creative spaces showcase and empower local artists and artist collectives by providing accessible and high impact gallery spaces. VCT’s partnership with the Vancouver Community College allows graduates of the Jewellery Art and Design program to display their award-winning work on the balcony level of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre lobby.
The current exhibition features work from Cindy Rattray, Corinne Cheng, Gabriel Mador, and Tyler Scalabrino.
Arts Umbrella - Gallery for Young Artists
Vancouver Playhouse Lobby
VCT proudly celebrates the work of young artists enrolled in the Arts Umbrella Foundation Program. The Foundation Program provides a multi-disciplinary experience for students aged 7-12 with an emerging interest in Art and Design. The students are exposed to many creative disciplines throughout the yearlong program, where they are able to experiment with new forms of working.
VCT’s partnership with Arts Umbrella brings local young artists to the forefront of the artistic community by displaying the students’ year-end pieces in the lively lobbies of the Vancouver Playhouse.
Arts Umbrella’s Foundation Program is generously supported by the Poseley Family.
Platforms
Over the course of two years, Platforms: Nine Places for Seeing will be showcased on multiple public platforms throughout the city and will present new works regularly.
It will feature newly commissioned works by 21 local xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and urban Indigenous artists.
We are proud to host three of the artists, Olivia George on the Queen Elizabeth Theatre windows, Atheana Picha on the Vancouver Playhouse windows and Aaron Nelson-Moody on the šxʷƛ̓exən Xwtl’a7shn lightbox.
For more info go to: Nine Places for Seeing