http://www.comoxvalleyartgallery.com

Current

NO BURDEN

Chrystal Phan, Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde (Kanienkehaka), and Christian Yves Jones explore cultural identity... Its shaping influence can become a heavy burden and responsibility for BIPOC artists.

January 25 - March 22 2025 Learn More

Exhibitions

  • NO BURDEN

    Exploring the messy politics, memories, and emotions that arise when cultural identities are foregrounded in art.

    January 25 - March 22 2025

Events

Past Convergent Programming

CVAG Celebrates • 50 Year Anniversary • 20 Years on Location

The Comox Valley Art gallery is celebrating — through an art faire that features the work of regional artisans and a retrospective installation, video program, and ongoing events that chronicle the VISION • ART • CULTURE that has been part of the gallery’s story of over 50 years as an organization and 20 years in its current location, the former Courtenay Firehall.

November 20 - December 23 2024 Learn More

SAFE | Holding space for lived experiences and safer ways of being amidst the Toxic Drug Poisoning Crisis

Produced by the Comox Valley Art Gallery + Walk With Me team in collaboration with AVI Health + Community Services, Patrick Dionne + Miki Gingras, North Island College, and Vancouver Island University. This program is dedicated to those who shared their insights with courage, and to those whose lives have been lost.

October 5 - 19 2024 Learn More

Before . Now . After | Avant . Maintenant . Après

Diane Landry | Matière dans le Temps - exposition individuelle + résidence de l’artiste + cérémonie d’ouverture | Sarah Crawley - résidence créative + projet d’engagement communautaire | Séries de fabrication d’arts + événewments. Été 2024 | Diane Landry | Matter in Time – solo exhibition + artist residency + opening event | Sarah Crawley – creative residency + community engagement project | Make Art series + events | Summer 2024

May 26 - September 14 2024 Learn More

RETURN TO WATER 2024

Starting in 2020, the Comox Valley Art Gallery has held programming that instigates consideration of how we as human beings are in relationship with the waters of this region. The exhibitions presented and art-based community activations recognize that everything is connected to water. This year, the program looks to the past, considers the present, and envisions a future in which harmonic balance with the watershed is restored.

April 13 - May 25 2024 Learn More

What Happens When

How we understand, interpret, and navigate the intricate, creative, and evolving landscape of the unexpected.

January 27 - March 23 2024 Learn More

Upholding One Another 

Exhibitions | Installations | Cultural Sharing | Video Programs | Community Conversations + Art-Making | Activism Events — empowered through intersectional discourse, vulnerability, and respect for each other. Community collaborations stitch together creative actions + cultural teachings + knowledge-sharing to instigate social change through a convergent program that explores the topics of misogyny, gender-based + racialized violence, and resiliency.

November 16 2023 - January 13 2024 Learn More

Together Apart | Under One Roof

The convergent program Together Apart | Under One Roof presents distinct art practices and enduring relationships through an exhibition, curated artist residencies, and public events that engage the community.

May 8 - October 28 2023 Learn More

in | at | on : RETURN TO WATER 2023

Water – in, at, and on – through the artists' lens.

April 12 - May 27 2023 Learn More

OPEN ⋮ REALITY Convergent Program

New convergent program: VISIT to see site installations, exhibitions, incubators, artist residency. DROP-IN to the Public Open Studio for hands-on activities. PARTICIPATE in scheduled events. PUBLIC - ALL AGES during gallery hours or by arrangement.

December 7 2022 - April 1 2023 Learn More

ACCESS Renovation Project 2022

Exhibitions are closed during accessibility renovations. Walk With Me / CVAG Film Series / Youth Media Project info...

September 11 - November 19 2022 Learn More

Marlene Creates: An Interest in Place

Place – not as a geographical location but as a process...

June 4 - September 10 2022 Learn More

Return to Water

A comprehensive program that is all about water where we are – creative residencies / exhibition / community collaboration / cultural sharing / outreach + education / celebration.

February 18 - May 14 2022 Learn More

Where You Are – CVAG Winter Incubator Labs

programming activations that engage the community where we are.

January 11 - February 17 2022 Learn More

TERRI-LYNN WILLIAMS-DAVIDSON, A Community Collaboration

Community collaborations, solo exhibition, cultural sharing + teachings, lecture, public art opening, and a concert.

September 29 - December 31 2021 Learn More

Visible Labour

...the work that is going on all around us... GALLERY + SHOP:MADE HOURS: Thursday, Friday, Saturday 10 am - 5 pm. The gallery has Covid protocols in place to protect visitors and staff.

March 25 - May 29 2021 Learn More

OFFSITE_ONSITE

Portals of encounter with the work of artists and creative collaborators near and far. This convergent program includes concurrent exhibitions, research and production residencies, community Make Art drop-ins, and ongoing Offsite_Onsite installation projects.

February 27 - September 4 2021 Learn More

SPACE BETWEEN US

ONLINE + IN-GALLERY – INCUBATORS / ARTIST  RESIDENCY / MAKE ART / COLLABORATIVE PUBLICATIONS / ART TALKS Image: Alun Macanulty / Artwork: Foroozan Talelifard

December 3 2020 - February 27 2021 Learn More

WALK WITH ME

Traversing the human dimensions of the overdose crisis; seeking justice, hope, and transformation.

September 30 - November 21 2020 Learn More

Continuum

CVAG’S convergent programming 'Continuum' features projects that have unfolded over time, through evolving iterations and formats.

February 29 - September 11 2020 Learn More

IN THE WATER

"In the Water” enfolds convergent programming centred around artist KC Adam's production + community residency – "Singing to the Water" and her solo exhibition – "Birchbark Technology”, alongside community collaborations and creative incubators...

January 9 - February 29 2020 Learn More

Winter Program 2019

ROOT LOVE – Winter Program 2019 is a thematic convergent program that includes exhibitions, community engagement art activities, Project Room Studio incubator projects, artists-in-residence, and the 45th annual Winter Market of well-made-things.

November 24 2019 - January 10 2020 Learn More

Uncover

A convergent program that considers implications of concealing and revealing. Anna Gustafson / Clea Minaker / Elizabeth Russell + Natalie Nickerson / Heather Passmore / Nadine Bariteau

September 28 - November 23 2019 Learn More

Hold Being Held

Includes a creative residency, project room studios, community engagement make art events and an exhibition of the clay based work of seven artists.

June 27 - September 7 2019 Learn More

Constant Change

Constant Change is a convergent program that brings artists, makers, learners, teachers, and thinkers into relation through exhibition, interaction, conversation, demonstration

April 6 - June 8 2019 Learn More

APPROACHING PAINTING

Approaching Painting instigates opportunities for a group of artists to come together. Painters; Scott Bertram, Nicole Crouch, Robert Moon, Carole Thompson, Madeleine Wood, along with a performance artist, Cathy Coates and community facilitator, Cedar Waslewski to share time, aesthetic processes, creative inquiry, and perceptual explorations over several months…

January 26 - March 23 2019 Learn More

Winter Program 2018

The Comox Valley Art Gallery 44th Winter Art Market features handmade art + artful things by over 50 regional makers. Beginning November 23, CVAG expands its shop space to fill the gallery for the holiday season. The community is offered opportunities to meet the makers, shop for art and other hand-made treasures and to participate in make art events over the coming weeks.

November 23 - December 26 2018 Learn More

In This Place

In This Place reaches into the past to root us in this place and time. Remembering and honouring the ancestors, upholding the land, and creating a place of welcoming, gathering and healing are the foundation of this convergent program. Nump Ma Noch Gyai Yoo Lahss / We All Come From One Root is a multi-media exhibition by Kwakwakwk’wakw artist John Powell. This extensive body of work articulates the powerful interconnectedness of First Nations identities embedded within art and cultural practices, diversity, ceremony, and the everyday.

October 16 - November 20 2018 Learn More

Potlatch 67–67: The Potlatch Ban - Then and Now

Potlatch 67–67: The Potlatch Ban - Then and Now is a multi-artist thematic program that examines the impacts of the attempted cultural genocide through the Potlatch Ban and the resilience of First Nation peoples in preserving their culture and language for future generations.

July 20 - October 4 2018 Learn More

Touching Earth Bodies

Touching Earth Bodies looks at collaborative art practice through three bodies of work (Touching Earth Bodies, In Defiance, and In the Shadow of our own Dust) by Victoria-based artists Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde and Valerie Salez. This multi-media program explores the dynamics of interconnection through installation, photography, performance, a creative residency, and experiential learning with a public make/art activity, creating cornhusk dolls.

May 18 - June 29 2018 Learn More

Touch Me

Touch Me is a solo exhibition of work created by interdisciplinary artist Skeena Reece (Tsimshian / Gitksan / Cree / Meti).

April 6 - May 12 2018 Learn More

RETURN

RETURN is a convergent artistic program that brings together the politicized lens-based work of contemporary feminist photographers Nancy Bleck (Vancouver) and Eileen Leier (Kamloops).

January 27 - March 23 2018 Learn More

Winter Program 2017

Our Winter Program includes the 43rd annual CVAG Christmas Craft Fair, a window installation by Denman Island artist Cynthia Minden, and an ongoing presentation of artwork created by the CVAG team for the North Island Hospital in Courtenay.

December 1 - 24 2017 Learn More

OFFERINGS / OFFRANDES

OFFERINGS / OFFRANDES is a thematic program that integrates a multi-media installation artwork developed by artist, researcher, & curator, France Trépanier with regional artists and community collaborators. The exhibition “proposes reflection on the meaning of offering” through contemporary & traditional elements of gifting practices rooted in different cultures.

October 13 - November 18 2017 Learn More

VEINS / LISTEN / CUL-DE-SAC

VEINS / LISTEN / CUL-DE-SAC, is a thematic program of artist talks, Make Art Projects, and installations by inter-disciplinary, resident-artist Rita McKeough. This exhibition offers an immersion in a landscape where the paradox between a healthy natural world and human systems of capitalism, production, consumption can be contemplated.

July 13 - September 30 2017 Learn More

IMAGE TO TEXT TO IMAGE

Image to Text to Image: Creating Dialogue is an artistic program offered by CVAG and Comox Valley Community Arts, as an opportunity to consider the dynamics of communication and interpretation.

June 1 - 30 2017 Learn More

GATHER

This thematic program features an assemblage of work by ECUAD/ NIC/ IMG senior students and grads, shown both at CVAG and at North Island College.

April 28 - May 19 2017 Learn More

Carried Away

"Carried Away" is a creative program instigated by Montreal-based artists Vida Simon and Jack Stanley. Convergent thematic programming in CVAG's community space includes "Source Material II: Unfolding," featuring made objects and images by visual art students, faculty, and alumni.

March 10 - April 13 2017 Learn More

Extracting Narratives

This collaborative project, by painters Jeroen Witvliet and Neil McClelland (Netherlands/ Victoria), expresses shifting interpretations of utopia and the idyllic.

January 21 - February 25 2017 Learn More

Winter Program 2016

On November 18th, the Comox Valley Art Gallery opens its Winter Program to celebrate the holiday season. This will consist of our 42nd Annual Christmas Craft Fair, as well as the Hands On and Dimensions of the Season interactive exhibitions. Join us for events that include several artist performances and Make Art Projects.

November 18 - December 26 2016 Learn More

MAP: Make / Art / Place Fall Program

MAP: Make / Art / Place is a convergent artistic program comprised of thematically integrated exhibitions, research residencies, collaborations and workshops. This multifaceted project focuses on interdisciplinary meeting points of encounter, context, and experience as a means of activating cultural intersections between artistic and academic research, involving local community partners and post-secondary institutions.

October 1 - November 5 2016 Learn More

MAP: Make / Art / Place Summer Program

MAP is a convergent artistic program comprised of thematically integrated exhibitions, research residencies, collaborations and workshops. This multifaceted project focuses on interdisciplinary meeting points of encounter, context, and experience as a means of activating cultural intersections between artistic and academic research, involving local community partners and post-secondary institutions.

July 12 - September 17 2016 Learn More

Sooner or Later

The Comox Valley Art Gallery and the Comox Valley Community Arts Council invited community members to participate in an exhibition that celebrates our diverse creative community. We welcomed current, past and historical local Comox Valley artists, writers, performers, collaborators, creative collectives and cultural thinkers to submit work for SOONER OR LATER, a thematic show that examines diverse representations of CONTEMPORARY SELF-PORTRAITURE in all media.

June 1 - 30 2016 Learn More

Emergent Practice

Emergent Practice is a thematic program highlighting diverse arts-based curriculum and research modalities being explored by emerging artists, early learners, contemporary arts centres and educators. It is comprised of a group exhibition entitled Phenomenology featuring North Island College ECUAD External BFA graduates.

April 30 - May 21 2016 Learn More

Make/Repeat/Alter

Make/Repeat/Alter is a thematic exhibition program featuring a two person show in CVAG’s Contemporary Gallery. In the Community Space and the George Sawchuk Room students from NIDES will present thematically inspired collaborative projects. Make/Repeat/Alter looks at how artistic practice and learning modalities are connected through processes of making multiples and the variations/alterations that are embedded in these gestures and creative explorations.

March 18 - April 16 2016 Learn More

Meeting the Ground

In the midst of meeting the ground I am experiencing a quiet revolution. I don’t know where I am, whether I am in the process of gradually falling to the ground or floating away in the great stream. I don’t know if I am less afraid of death. For sure I am more alive. I sense a wider spread of tingling energy touching beyond what I can see. And that was my wish, the impetus for this investigation. I didn’t want my fear of death to stop me from being alive and flourishing right now.

January 22 - March 4 2016 Learn More

In this body: journeys in places of meeting

CVAG’s exhibition series In this body: journeys in places of meeting resides at the intersection of art and the everyday. The participating artists share affinities for creating and activating occurrences of being in this body, as they confront and negotiate the complex experiential terrain of family life, making space for death, and interspecies collaborations.

September 19 - November 6 2015 Learn More

Shift

March 14 - April 18 2015 Learn More