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.
The 2026 artist call is now closed. Please check back in late Spring 2026 for opportunities to apply for the 2027 artist call.
Spring Exhibition in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Lobbies
April 2026 to June 2026
Hipol Collective - Panapton
@hipol.co
Karl & Khim Mata Hipol
Panapton, a word meaning “to wrap,” “to enrobe,” or “to cover,” becomes both concept and method in Hipol Collective’s textile-based exhibition. Through fabric, Karl and Khim Mata Hipol explore the ways material can hold memory, embody gesture, and act as a living archive of diasporic experience. Cloth is not passive – it carries histories of labor, migration, care, and survival.
In this exhibition, textiles function as surface, structure, and story. Woven photographic works, soft sculptures, and suspended fabrics transform the space into an immersive environment where viewers move through layers of material and meaning. Drawing from Ilocano abel weaving traditions and the improvisational aesthetics of Filipino home-making, Panapton reflects how identity is continuously stitched, unraveled, and reassembled across time and place.
The act of wrapping becomes symbolic: of protection, concealment, and revelation. Fabric operates as a second skin, a shelter, a performative prop – suggesting how bodies navigate visibility and invisibility within diasporic contexts.
Panapton invites audiences to engage not only visually, but physically and emotionally, offering a space where memory is held, stories are women, and cultural presence is reclaimed through the quiet yet powerful language of cloth.
Karl Mata Hipol
karlhipolarts.com
Karl Mata Hipol is a Filipino Canadian multidisciplinary artist and curator based on the unceded territories of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. His art practice focuses on investigating the visibility and representation of Filipinos in the Canadian landscape through archival research. Holding a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2022), he has been recognized for his contributions to Anti-Racism and Social Justice, and awarded numerous accolades, including the AGO X RBC Emerging-Artist-in-Residence (2024) and Herschel Supply Co, Vancouver, Artist-in-residence (2022). His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with public art commissions across Vancouver and Burnaby.
Khim Mata Hipol
khimhpl.com
Filipino-born Khim Mata Hipol is an emerging interdisciplinary artist based on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam Nations. Through photography, Hipol examines how a sense of identity can be manipulated through commercialization. He explores the intersections of tourism, souvenir objects, and official government symbols, demonstrating how countries establish identity through these representations. Through portraiture, he illustrates how individuals use these objects to express patriotism and nationalism while simultaneously questioning their meanings and invoking ideas of colonialism and the “foreign”.
Winter Exhibition in the ANNEX
January 2026 to April 2026
Lucia Tam - A story within stories...
luciacreates.wixsite.com | @luchtam
Through years of traveling to Japan, I grew attached to its humble storefronts – some tucked away on quiet streets, others alive with the bustle of daily life. Encouraged by a few locals I met, I began painting these scenes in 2021 as an act of remembrance and longing. Each storefront carries its own quiet narrative, and painting them helped me stay connected to a place during a period when I could not return. And my character, Annie the Canadian fox, emerged – a gentle observer and wanderer, reflecting my own way of moving through these spaces. Through her and other characters, the streets begin to breathe, and the scenes whisper stories of memory, presence, distance, and belonging. Through colour and quiet detail, these paintings keep my world near, even when it feels far away.
Lucia Tam is a Vancouver-based artist and illustrator. After six years working as a designer, she returned to the Alberta College (University) of Arts in 2001 to deepen her exploration of fine arts. Her creative journey has since spanned painting, photography, and glass, all shaped by her long-standing interest in the quiet rhythms of daily life and the shifting space between nature and urban settings.
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 Justina Alves, Taylor Dougall, Michaela Schaly, and Andrew Wade.
Arts Umbrella - Gallery for Young Artists
Vancouver Playhouse Lobby
VCT’s near decade-long partnership with Arts Umbrella brings local young artists to the forefront of the artistic community by displaying the students’ pieces in the lively lobbies of the Vancouver Playhouse.
Current Exhibition
November 2025 to May 2026
5-6 Years – Explorers (Drawing & Painting)
Instructor: Oksana Slonevskaya
Assistant: Leea Contractor
Inspired by the 5000–4000 BC Sefar mural “The Small Mufflons,” students explored sketching techniques, composition, and texture to create animal forms on a stone-wall background. The project uses mixed media, collage, chalk pastels, and brush washes to explore a monochromatic aesthetic that echoes ancient imagery while emphasizing texture and form.
6-8 Years – Drawing & Painting
Instructor: Golnar Sepahi
Assistant: Homa Khosravijelodar
Students created their own landscape composition inspired by tattoo and digital artist Refael Idan Suissa. Experimenting with watercolour, inks, tempera, black ink, and colour pencils, the project explores elements of design including pattern, shape, and use of vibrant colours.
9-12 Years – Drawing & Painting
Instructor: Lusine Sahakyan
Assistant: Artem Struyanskiy
Inspired by Japanese Notan art, this project explores the harmony of light and dark through thoughtful composition. Using brush and ink, students focused on balancing positive and negative space while studying value relationships. The work emphasizes simplicity, contrast, and visual equilibrium, creating designs that highlight the interplay between shadow and form.
Arts Umbrella School of Art and Design: Program Website
Platforms
Over the course of two years, Platforms: The Teachers Among Us will be showcased on multiple public platforms throughout the city and will present new works regularly.
It will feature newly commissioned works by 20 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 Dana Claxton's Sitting Bull in Vancouver on the šxʷƛ̓exən Xwtl’a7shn lightbox.
For more info go to: Platforms: The Teachers Among Us