UBCO Emergence

Amy Bugera, Brenna Lam Kennedy, Ella Cottier, Faith Bye, Fredrik Thacker, & Kate Nicholson

Topham Brown Gallery
May 22 – July 12, 2025

Emergence is an annual group exhibition showcasing the work of graduating students from the University of British Columbia Okanagan’s Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Media Studies programs. This year’s exhibition features six emerging artists working across painting, photography, sculpture, installation, assemblage, and digital media.

Each artist draws from personal experience, critical theory, or cultural observation to create work that engages with pressing contemporary themes. From interrogations of consumerism and environmental degradation to explorations of memory, grief, sexuality, and identity; Emergence presents a deeply considered and diverse body of work. These practices traverse the boundaries between tradition and experimentation—some manipulating family archives and found materials, others working with digital manipulation or painterly abstraction.

Since 2009, the Vernon Public Art Gallery has proudly supported the final exhibitions of BFA/BMS graduates from UBC Okanagan. This annual showcase continues to serve as a platform for emerging artists to present ambitious work to new audiences and step into the next phase of their creative journeys. Emergence invites viewers into intimate, challenging, and thoughtful visual worlds shaped by a generation of artists who are attuned to the complexities of the present moment.

Amy Bugera
Amy Bugera critiques the spectacle of consumer culture through print-based installation. Drawing influence from Guy Debord’s theories on media, advertising, and capitalist disillusionment, Bugera examines the ways in which platforms like Amazon mediate our experiences through reductive, persuasive design. Her work manipulates familiar digital commands such as “Add to cart” or “Buy now,” transforming them through encaustic print processes to highlight their absurdity and ubiquity. By repeating and distorting these icons, Bugera reveals how advertising functions as a tool of disconnection—encouraging consumption while suppressing reflection. Her practice is both satirical and sincere, inviting viewers to pause and reconsider the systems we navigate daily.

Brenna Lam Kennedy
Brenna Lam Kennedy is a multimedia artist and photographer whose work reflects on intimacy, time, and digital mediation. In her photographic series Proximity, Kennedy captures tender moments between subjects, where these images exist outside linear time, imbued with warmth and a quiet sense of longing. Subtle digital interventions and filmic colour grading collapse the distance between viewer and subject, heightening the emotional resonance of touch and gesture. Kennedy’s interest in the temporality of relationships is central to her practice: how we mark moments of closeness, how we remember them, and how digital technologies alter our perception of time itself.

Ella Cottier
Ella Cottier’s sculptural installation Cans investigates the ecological, archaeological, and philosophical implications of what we leave behind. Working with slip-cast ceramic forms derived from discarded aluminum cans, Cottier explores the tension between the “natural” and “unnatural” in the Anthropocene. Her practice considers trash as artifact, reframing the overlooked or unwanted as future remnants of our current civilization. While the work is rooted in environmental concern, it also evokes a meditative sensibility—drawing attention to our embeddedness in ecological systems. By casting everyday waste in fragile ceramic, Cottier prompts viewers to reflect on legacy, permanence, and the quiet material traces of human activity.

Faith Bye
Faith Bye’s mixed-media paintings explore the emotional weight of everyday objects through acts of memorialization. Created in the aftermath of her grandmother’s sudden passing, Bye’s assemblages incorporate inherited domestic items—band-aids, sheets, household ephemera—embedded into sculptural grounds of modeling paste, gesso, and acrylic medium. These physical materials are then overlaid with painted still-life scenes, allowing the boundary between the real and the represented to blur. Her work speaks to the quiet rituals of grief and remembrance, and how material things—once ordinary—become saturated with memory. Through painterly layering, Bye constructs intimate dialogues between loss, family, and the texture of daily life.

Fredrik Thacker
Fredrik Thacker’s expressive paintings are visceral interrogations of queer desire, sexual consumption, and the politics of visibility. Drawing on pornography as both subject and conceptual framework, Thacker collapses bodies into abstracted forms that pulse with intensity and urgency. Influenced by theorists like Linda Williams, his work probes the ways pornographic images are consumed, fragmented, and fetishized—particularly in relation to queer and trans identity. Through rapid paint application, mixed media layering, and disrupted figuration, Thacker recreates a “frenzy of the visible,” evoking what he describes as visual “regurgitation” of desire and disgust. His paintings simultaneously seduce and resist, offering no stable ground for interpretation.

Kate Nicholson
Kate Nicholson’s paintings reflect on the instability of memory, the complexities of growing up, and the disorientation of nostalgia. Using family photographs as source material, Nicholson reinterprets childhood scenes through a mix of figuration and gestural abstraction. Her works disrupt the original images with energetic markings and overlays, creating a sense of interference—like a corrupted digital file or fleeting mental image. The result is a visual language that is both deeply personal and broadly relatable, capturing the tension between sentimentality and unease. Nicholson’s practice sits at the intersection of memory and media, probing how we reconstruct the past and contend with its emotional residues.

In Conclusion

Together, the works in this years Emergence exhibition reflect a generation of artists attuned to the social, environmental, and emotional contours of contemporary life. With practices grounded in research, lived experience, and material experimentation, these artists offer not only a snapshot of where they are now, but a glimpse of where they are headed. The Vernon Public Art Gallery is proud to support these emerging voices at a pivotal moment in their creative evolution, and we look forward to seeing how their practices continue to develop and resonate beyond this exhibition.

Image Description: Brenna Lam Kennedy

SD 22 Indigenous School Students
Gathered

Exhibition on view from May 22 – June 13

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.

Image Description: Juliet L, gr. 5, Baeirsto

SD#22 Elementary Students

Community Gallery & Up-Front Gallery
March 15 – April 10, 2025

Opening Reception: March 15, 2025

Art from the Heart is the annual exhibition by elementary students from School District No.22. Their artwork delights viewers with their creativeness under the guidance of their art teacher. The opening day for the exhibition is Saturday, March 15th, please join us in celebrating this beautiful exhibition with all the artists and their loved ones.

Isabelle Hayeur

Topham Brown Memorial Gallery
March 13 – May 13, 2025

Opening Reception: May 13, 2025

Major bodies of works in Hayeur’s studio practice are focused on environmental changes caused by human development or natural causes. Her photographs document the destruction of natural habitats and whole ecosystems. The exhibition titled Wild Times presented at the Vernon Public Art Gallery consist of photographs of landscapes affected by forest fires in Quebec and British Columbia in the 2020 and 2021 summer seasons. The photographs from sites near Las Saint-Jean depict the after effects of the wildfire which changed the ecosystems in the largest forest fire in the province’s history. The images captured in 2021 show the active fires in British Columbia. The oppressive plumes of raising smoke changed the appearance of the landscape and the thick smoke was hardly penetrated by the sun’s rays. The toxic smoke drifted through large areas and the images captured from satellite views exemplified the apocalyptic scale of the burning infernos.

Hayeur’s focus on environmental changes is also a critique of environmental stewardship and management of the forests. Western Canada and the United States have been affected by the climate change and, specifically, prolonged droughts contribute negatively to the fragile ecosystems. In her statement she points out that forest companies harvest timber from ecologically diverse ecosystems, but replant logged areas with monocrop species which inevitably do not contribute to the ecological diversity of healthy forests. She also questions the continuous suppression of forest fires which results in the excessive fuel load on the forest floor. Her works advocate indirectly for prescribed burning, a practice which reintroduces fire as natural part of a healthy ecosystem. Hayeur’s exhibition Wild Times contains images of cataclysmic active fires and resulting destruction of natural environments. The images of burnt forests invoke the feeling of existential angst which serve as powerful memento mori for all humanity to contemplate.

VPAG & The Vernon Winter Carnival Present Pinot & Paint

Join us on February 11th for a painting event, hosted by local Artists Mandi Irmen and Christine Kashuba for an evening of creativity, laughter, good company and wine.

In conjunction with the Vernon Winter Carnival’s Back to the 80’s theme, we will be painting Keith Haring’s iconic work Best Buddies Pop Shop I (A) from 1987. Haring was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. Launched in 1986, Pop Shop I was a revolutionary concept that blurred the lines between commercialism and high art. An extension of his work, the boutique sold prints, T-shirts and novelty items with Keith’s imagery as well as some of his contemporaries, like Kenny Scharf and Jean Michel Basquiat.

Best Buddies remains a testament to Haring’s commitment to accessibility and his belief that art should be for everyone. Aligning with our Mandate to promote and encourage visual arts in the broader community, Best Buddies exemplifies Haring’s dedication to using art as a medium for social change, encouraging dialogue, and breaking down the exclusivity often associated with the art world.

Tickets can be purchased via the Vernon Winter Carnival’s website, bring your group, your friends or just yourself and enjoy a relaxing and creative evening

Vernon & District Immigrant & Community Services Society Project

Community Gallery
January 9 – March 5, 2025

Opening Reception: January 9, 2025 from 6-8 PM

The focus of the project was to introduce recent newcomers to visitor protocols of engagement with local Syilx First Nation people’s culture and the land itself. The four-day series of workshops were focused on Land Acknowledgement, Allyship, traditional Tule mat making and the cultural importance of marshlands. In the final session the participants created a series of collages which will be on display at the gallery. The intent of the final workshop was aimed towards appreciation of culture and building relationship through art. The workshops were led by Syilx Nation members Mariel Belanger and her daughter Sienna.

Chrystal Phan

Community Gallery & Up-Front Galleryy
January 9 – March 5, 2025

Opening Reception: January 9, 2025 from 6-8 PM

Chrystal Phan is a representational artist who integrates the Vietnamese-Canadian experience into narrative oil paintings to challenge the ways in which we imagine Canadian identity, drawing particular attention to how the reification of racial stereotypes in art and media can actually reinforce social divisions that prevent racialized people from ever feeling “Canadian”. Using personal narratives Phan’s work collapses the boundary between public and private so that viewers can connect their own lives and experiences to the paintings at an intimate level.

Once for A While is a series of oil paintings that explore a Vietnamese family’s awkward attempts at integrating into Canadian life. Using examples from Phan’s own childhood and those of her friends, Phan’s intention is to capture humorous moments where cultural values have clashed.

David Wilson Sookinakin

Topham Brown Memorial Gallery
January 9 – March 5, 2025

Opening Reception: January 9, 2025 from 6-8 PM

Over the years, David Wilson Sookinakin has developed a signature style of paintings based on the traditional pictographs found on numerous locations throughout Syilx Nation Territory. He uses pictorial elements which often illustrate some of the stories and narratives passed down through oral tradition and storytelling. In addition to the traditional narratives, Wilson creates narratives which he invents to highlight the context of post-contact experiences of First Nations peoples. Nevertheless, Wilson’s artforms have been evolving over several decades of his prolific artistic career.

“My art is ever evolving and is a true representation of my identity as an Interior Salish person.  It is natural evolution of pictographs from their ancient form to a contemporary interpretation using form lines unique to First Nations art.  I am a storyteller through art and words and my message to the Interior Salish people and the world is that we Interior Salish have at least one beautiful and vibrant First Nations art form totally unique and must be shared with the world.”

David Wilson Sookinakin

Featuring: Sophie Atkinson, Allan Brooks, Joe Plaskett, Paul Jones, Holly Middleton

Community Gallery
October 3 – December 18, 2024

The Vernon Public Art Gallery (VPAG) is pleased to present From the Vault, an exhibition highlighting select works from its permanent collection, on display from October 3 to December 18, 2024. This showcase offers the public a rare opportunity to view pieces by influential artists with ties to the region, including Allan Brooks, Sophie Atkinson, Janet Holly Middleton, and Paul Jones, with additional works by renowned BC artist Joe Plaskett.

VPAG’s permanent collection consists of over 670 artworks by 154 artists. The earliest piece dates to 1909, while the latest acquisitions were made as recently as 2022. Each piece contributes to the story of the region’s artistic heritage and evolution.

Featured artist Allan Brooks (1869–1946), known worldwide as a naturalist and illustrator, made significant contributions to North American wildlife studies, especially of Canadian bird species. Brooks, honored by Canadian Heritage in 2000 as a person of Canadian Historical Importance, devoted his career to capturing the unique fauna of British Columbia and beyond.

Trailblazing artist Sophie Atkinson (1876–1972) was among the first women to document the Okanagan landscape in her work. After WWI, she traveled internationally before settling in Canada, where she painted commissioned works for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Her art captured the rugged beauty of Western Canada, establishing a legacy that would inspire future generations.

Janet Holly Middleton (1922–2018) combined her artistic talent with a passion for education. Her career included teaching positions at the University of Alberta, Banff School of Fine Arts, and University of Guelph, where she influenced countless Canadian artists. Known for her adventurous spirit, Middleton drew inspiration from her travels, producing works with scenes from across the globe.

Joe Plaskett (1918–2014) brought his artistic vision to an international stage, with works held in collections from Prince Edward Island to Vancouver Island, including the National Gallery of Canada. Plaskett’s talent was recognized early on by Lawren Harris, and he was awarded the first Emily Carr Scholarship in 1946. This opportunity took him from San Francisco to New York, and eventually to Paris, where he created some of his most celebrated pieces.

The exhibition also includes pieces by Paul Jones (1921–2018), a Vernon-based artist and writer who served on the VPAG board in the 1990s. Jones’s work integrates sand and acrylic resin to evoke the landscapes of his youth near the Pembina River, creating textured pieces that speak to both personal memory and place.

Lyndal Osborne, John Freeman, Liz Ingram, Bernd Hildebrandt

Topham Brown Memorial Gallery
October 3 – December 20, 2024

The exhibition Rewilding: The Forest Will Forget Us, created by Lyndal Osborne and John Freeman, and Liz Ingram and Bernd Hildebrandt, is an exhibit about the resilience of nature as witnessed in land sited on a boreal forest lake in Alberta. In the process they acknowledge the many other stories that go back millennia, and which have been shaped by people living and surviving on the land. These legends and beliefs are now re-emerging from oral histories of the original peoples of these lands and help us to shape our common existence within nature.

Photography: Digital Perfections