Community Gallery Opening Reception: March 19 from 6 to 8 pm
March 20
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10:00 am
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May 20
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5:00 pm
Blooming Together is a collaborative exhibition that explores themes of community, diversity, and collective growth. Created by the artists of Cool Arts Society, the exhibition highlights how individual voices come together to form a vibrant, colourful, and ever-evolving whole.
At the centre of the exhibition is a large collaborative artwork representing community as a shared landscape. It is built through layers, colours, and connections. Alongside this work, the artists present a series of clay masks, each one unique, illustrating the diversity of identities, expressions, and perspectives within the group.
The exhibition unfolds through three closely connected themes: Dream, Birth, and Growth. Lush jungle scenes inspired by the world of Henri Rousseau evoke imagination and a dreamlike atmosphere. Raised floral elements symbolize the birth of a growing community, while the collective compositions emphasize the strength that emerges through collaboration, inclusion, and shared creation.
Caroline Galbraith Gallery Opening Reception: March 19 from 6 to 8 pm
March 20
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10:00 am
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May 20
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5:00 pm
I’m in This World, Doing is a body of work that explores the hidden systems of labour that quietly sustain our daily lives. Through mixed-media works and installations, Vivian Smith examines how unpaid care work, domestic labour, and affective labour remain economically invisible despite their essential role in supporting society. The exhibition draws attention to the intersection of the gift economy and capitalism, embedding images of unpaid work into objects that hold greater market value than the labour they depict. In doing so, Smith challenges viewers to reconsider how we assign worth, productivity, and compensation in contemporary life.
Rooted in personal documentation, the works feature photographs of the artist performing everyday tasks—cleaning, cooking, and caregiving—printed onto domestic textiles such as chiffon, satin, silk, and linen, then coated in beeswax. These materials reference both gendered expectations of care and the natural labour of worker bees. By transforming these images through hand-stitching, quilting, and sculptural installation, Smith reveals how women’s labour connects intimate home spaces to global economic systems. The exhibition ultimately advocates for recognition and systemic change, including the need for Universal Basic Income as a way to value essential work that remains unseen.
Vivian Smith is an artist based in Mohkinstsis (Calgary), Alberta. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction from the Alberta University of the Arts and has participated in numerous residencies, including at the Kiyooka Ohe Arts Centre and the Similkameen Artist Residency. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Calgary Arts Development Authority, and she has exhibited widely across Canada. Through her interdisciplinary practice, Smith focuses on labour, gender, and economic systems, creating work that encourages dialogue about how care, value, and community are interconnected.
Topham Brown Memorial Gallery Opening Reception: March 19 from 6 to 8 pm
March 20
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10:00 am
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May 20
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5:00 pm
Portals to Elsewhere invites viewers into a dreamlike, psychological landscape populated by strange, fragile, and resilient beings. Drawing from her lived experience with disability and chronic illness, Amy J. Dyck creates figures that are broken and fierce, layered with symbols of human, animal, and mechanical forms. These creatures act as visual metaphors for imagination, memory, instinct, resistance, and self-protection—reflecting the complexity of what it means to endure and adapt.
At the heart of the exhibition is a large circular installation that transforms the gallery into a contemplative, immersive environment. Seven evolving figures suggest movement through time, even as they were created during a period when the artist’s body was in collapse. Windows appear throughout the work as a central metaphor—portals to other spaces and possibilities, offering escape, reflection, and the hope of becoming something different. The exhibition ultimately becomes a wild, otherworldly place where both artist and viewer are invited to imagine new ways of belonging, resilience, and home.
Amy J. Dyck is a contemporary multimedia figurative artist and writer based in Langley, British Columbia. After a sudden and severe illness in her early twenties left her using a wheelchair, Dyck turned to art as a way to process and survive her changing reality. Her practice draws on classical approaches to anatomy and figurative painting, combined with experimental mixed media processes that explore the body as a vessel for memory, emotion, and lived experience. Dyck exhibits widely, with work held in private collections internationally. She has received multiple international awards, was granted a Canada Council for the Arts award in 2024, and is a frequent podcast guest and speaker. She is currently working on a memoir exploring the intersection of art, illness, and resilience.
October 16, 2025
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6:00 pm
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December 20, 2025
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4:00 pm
Members’ Exhibition
Caroline Galbraith Gallery & Up-Front Gallery October 16 – December 20, 2025
Opening Reception: October 16, 2025
Our annual Members Exhibition, Exposed!, provides a unique opportunity to showcase the breadth of talent within our local art community. This exhibition offers the public a chance to appreciate the diverse approaches and styles embraced by our members, reflecting a deep engagement with artistic practice.
October 2, 2025
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6:00 pm
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December 24, 2025
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5:00 pm
Mark Thibeault
Topham Brown Memorial Gallery October 3 – December 24, 2025 Opening Reception: October 2, 2025 Artist Talk: November 27, 2025
Populated by northern B.C.–based artist Mark Thibeault features large-scale abstract paintings exploring the shifting connections between people and the natural world. Initiated during the pandemic and continuing today, the series embraces intuition and improvisation, drawing on the biodiversity of northwest British Columbia. Thibeault’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, music, and lutherie, with his work reflecting both the fragility of ecosystems and our shared responsibility to them.
Members are invited to submit to this year’s edition of Exposed!, the Vernon Public Art Gallery’s annual members’ exhibition celebrating the creativity and talent of our community. This much-anticipated show offers artists of all backgrounds and experience levels the opportunity to present their work in a professional gallery setting.
As a fundraiser for the Gallery, artists are encouraged to make their works available for sale, with a portion of proceeds supporting VPAG’s exhibitions and programs. New this year, however, members may also choose to list their work as Not For Sale (NFS), ensuring that everyone can participate without the pressure of selling.
Above all, the Members’ Exhibition is about giving back to those who support us year-round. This is your opportunity to bring out your best work and share your talents with the community in a professional gallery environment. We are proud to showcase the diverse creativity of our membership and to celebrate the vital role you play in sustaining the arts in our region.
How to Participate
Open to all current VPAG members
Submit up to two artworks in any medium (painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media, etc.)
Maximum size: 24 x 36 inches (2D) or 50” total dimensions (3D)
Works must be ready to hang or display
Sales encouraged as part of our fundraiser (30% commission applies), with the option to list works as Not for Sale (NFS)
Works must be delivered to the Gallery on or before October 3, 2025
*New* this year we’ve added an NFS (Not-For-Sale) option for artists who wish to participate but do not want to sell their work. While this exhibition remains a gallery fundraiser, we also recognize that offering a platform for members to share their artwork without the pressure of sales is important. This shift is part of our longer-term vision to transform the Members’ Exhibition into a fully Not-for-Sale exhibition, reflecting our role as a public gallery where the focus remains on presenting art in a non-commercial context. Above all, this exhibition is about celebrating you and your creative contributions to our community!
July 25, 2025
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8:00 am
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October 8, 2025
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5:00 pm
Teen Junction
Up-Front Gallery July 25 – September 24, 2025
Opening Reception: July 24 from 6-8 PM
Through Our Eyes is a community-based exhibition created by youth from the Teen Junction Youth Centre in partnership with the Vernon Public Art Gallery. This ongoing project gives voice to the lived experiences of Vernon’s youth, offering a platform for expression, representation, and connection through the arts. Teen Junction provides a safe, supportive after-school space for youth to connect, learn, and access resources when needed.
July 25, 2025
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8:00 am
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September 24, 2025
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5:00 pm
UBCO Printmaking
Community Gallery July 25 – September 24, 2025
Opening Reception: July 24 from 6-8 PM
HOT OFF THE PRESS showcases a diverse selection of new work created by students in the printmaking program at UBC Okanagan. Ranging from traditional techniques such as intaglio and relief printing to experimental, mixed-media approaches, the exhibition offers a vibrant cross-section of contemporary student print practices.
Selected with the guidance of UBCO professor Briar Craig and sessional lecturer Dr. Darian Goldin Stahl—who also led the courses from which these works emerged—the exhibition reflects the rigour, play, and conceptual inquiry fostered in the studio. With students at different stages in their academic and artistic journeys, the exhibition highlights both those just beginning to explore the fundamentals of printmaking and those using the medium to push the boundaries of process and form.
Together, these prints speak to the evolving possibilities of printmaking as both a technical and expressive medium. HOT OFF THE PRESS celebrates the creative voices of a new generation of artists, offering insight into the thoughtful, hands-on, and critically engaged work being produced in UBCO’s dynamic printmaking studios.
Gathered celebrates the creativity, cultural knowledge, and artistic expression of Indigenous students from across School District No. 22. Showcasing work by students from elementary through high school, this exhibition highlights a wide range of media.
The exhibition reflects both traditional knowledge and contemporary influences, with many students drawing from their cultural heritage while engaging with present-day themes and personal experiences. The result is a vibrant and diverse collection that speaks to identity, community, and the evolving nature of Indigenous art.
In Nicola Tibbetts’ Smoky Summers, the landscapes we think we know are rendered through the soft veil of smoke – a filter that is no longer temporary, but emblematic of a broader ecological shift. These quiet, expansive oil paintings speak to the visceral and visual impact of climate change on the West Coast of Canada. They are not overtly didactic or alarmist; rather, they are quietly devastating in their familiarity. The scenes Tibbetts depicts – recreational lakes, basketball courts, mountain ranges – are recognizable to many who live in British Columbia. But beneath their calm surfaces lies a shared, unsettling truth: summer is not what it used to be.
The title of the exhibition, Smoky Summers, evokes both nostalgia and disruption. Where summer once meant blue skies, carefree days, and a reliable rhythm of warmth and recreation, it now increasingly signals evacuation alerts, smoke advisories, and the dread of escalating wildfire conditions. In her artist statement, Tibbetts reflects on the changing character of summer: “Wildfires, a new summer reality, and the smoke that envelops the landscape in inescapable.” The work emerges from lived experience – both personal and collective – offering a visual archive of summers marked by crisis yet tinged with beauty and resilience.
