Surrey Art Gallery celebrates 45 years with art from South of the Fraser

SURREY Art Gallery is marking 45 years of collecting, exhibiting, and artmaking in the community with the exhibition Where We Have Been. Highlighting over forty artworks from the Gallery’s permanent collection, the paintings, photography, sculpture, and video installations reflect on the connection between place, nature, memory, and identity in South of the Fraser.

“In celebration of the Gallery’s 45th anniversary, the exhibition brings some of the Gallery’s oldest acquisitions into conversation with some of its most recent,” says Surrey Art Gallery Assistant Curator Rhys Edwards. “The range of voices on display speaks to the diversity of artmaking throughout this region’s history, all the while illustrating how profoundly these artists have visioned the struggles, the beauty, and the complex realities that shape our community.”

The full list of artists includes Michael Abraham, Jim Adams, Sonny Assu, Sylvia Grace Borda, Karin Bubaš, Sarindar Dhaliwal, Lakshmi Gill, Ravi Gill, Jeremy Herndl, Doreen Jensen, Chris MacClure, Heidi McKenzie, Ulli Maibauer, Arnold Mikelson, Shani Mootoo, Ann Nelson, Fred Owen, Bill Rennie, Don Romanchuk, Adele Samphire, Nicolas Sassoon, Helma Sawatzky, Ranjan Sen, Jan Wade, Stella Weinert, Leslie Wells, and Joanna S. Wilson.

Register today at surrey.ca/artgallery or by phone at 604-501-5100 for pre-booked tours, which begin September 19. Pre-booked Gallery visits will be available at select times on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays 5-9:30 p.m. and Saturdays 10-5 p.m.

While at the Gallery also visit three additional exhibitions. Don Hutchinson and Ying-Yueh Chuang: Passages explores the whimsical possibilities of ceramic with fantastical creatures and lifeforms from two Surrey-based artists. In the video installation Proscenium, Carol Sawyer uses the stage as means to play with the audience’s perception of images, illusions, and performance, and artists Dan Tell, James Lash, and Sheri Lynn Seitz from the Colour Collective celebrate the City through vibrant landscape painting and photographs in Searching for Surrey.

After dark, visit our offsite UrbanScreen venue for Varvara & Mar: We Are the Clouds to transform your movements into clouds, floating serenely across a brilliant blue sky projected in largescale on the west wall of Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre.

We will also be offering onsite art courses for children, youth, and adults ranging from watercolour and clay sculpture to drawing and much more on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings and Saturdays during the day. Register online, courses begin September 28.

Consider taking the Gallery’s at leisure drawing and ceramics Art Takeout courses at home as well and continue to visit online for the Art Together offerings, including Art in Conversation, Art in Motion, and Art from the Archives.