April 2025 Arts and Culture Events

Featured Image Photo Credit: kaymeek.com

 

Spring is in full swing, and the local arts calendar is bloomin’ packed! From international art conventions to galas to gallery exhibitions showing off the latest burst of inspiration, the Coast and Mountains culture forecast is looking brighter than ever. Across each community, you’ll find new ways to appreciate the brighter spots of weather, namely getting out and engaging with new art! With winter in the rearview, this is your chance to fill your tanks with some much-needed colour. Let’s see what’s happening this month!

Apr 17 – Sep 28, 2025

Lucy Raven: Murderers Bar presents new and recent works by the multidisciplinary artist best known for examining the mechanics of film, photography, and video—whether animated, digital, mechanical, or cinematic. Murderers Bar marks the first exhibition at the VAG curated by Anthony Kiendl, the Gallery’s CEO & Executive Director, since his appointment in 2020.

Lucy Raven, Murderers Bar, 2025, production still from moving image installation, Courtesy of the Artist and Lisson Gallery, © Lucy Raven

April 24 – 27, 2025

Returning for its ninth year, Art Vancouver is one of the biggest contemporary art fairs on the West Coast. Exhibiting over 100 local and international galleries and artists, visitors wander through the Vancouver Convention Center, discovering new pieces around every corner. If you’re looking for inspiring work to spruce up your space, this is an excellent place to start.

Photo credit: artvancouver.net

Apr 5 – 11, 2025

The Fraser Valley Academy of Dance presents a festival celebration of the local ballet community. A group show featuring dancers from the renowned school, performers in this annual showcase often go on to further acclaim on the world’s ballet stage. It’s set to be an incredible festival of artistry and athleticism in equal measure.

Apr 11 – 24, 2025

Featuring the work of 12 emerging artists within the KPU  Bachelor of Fine Arts program, this expansive show is a collection of the next generation’s creative voices. Each student’s work is the culmination of four years in the hands-on program, where honing inspiration and crafting execution is the name of the game. Always a highlight in the yearly calendar, this group showcase will span a variety of styles, materials and mediums.

Photo credit: kpu.ca

Apr 12, 2025

As the Audain Art Museum’s main fundraising event for the year, this is a formal gala dinner to celebrate local art and support a community of culture. Guests will attend a cocktail reception, bid on art pieces donated by area creatives, and enjoy a multi-course meal before the evening is wrapped up. Best of all, proceeds will go directly towards one of Whistler’s premier cultural hubs

Photo credit: audaingala.com

Apr 26, 2025

For countless generations, dance has been integral in defining Indigenous art and culture. Using the wisdom and artistic practices of the Northwest Coast’s first people as a starting point, this show layers masked performance, projected imagery, soundscape, and LED puppetry together into one incredible, immersive experience.

Photo credit: kaymeek.com

Until April 6, 2025

This ongoing film series presents a treatise on The Impressionists and their impact on the history of visual art. Discover the radical artists and bold personalities behind their first groundbreaking show 150 years ago, told through the voices of those who witnessed it. Experience the Musée d’Orsay’s stunning exhibition on the big screen, bringing new insight into the passion and rebellion that changed art forever.

Photo Credit: kaymeek.com

Until April 20, 2025

This solo exhibition by Kim Kennedy Austin centres upon the artist’s fascination with how 20th-century advertising, media, and popular culture can generate myth and meaning. Drawing on a range of movies and books through this body of work, she explores topics such as conformity, consumer capitalism, risk, and blind faith.

Kim Kennedy Austin, What Price Salvation?, paint on ceramic. Photo courtesy of the artist

Until May 5, 2025

A wide-ranging collection of Indigenous carving, Curve! focuses on the often lesser-represented women artists of the community. It’s a fascinating look at the various styles and accents that artists find while working within the same medium. If you’re visiting Whistler this spring, be sure to stop by before it wraps up!

Dale Marie Campbell, Woman who Brought the Salmon, 2021, alder, abalone and pigment, Private Collection.

Until May 11

In xʷəlməxʷ Child, Manuel Axel Strain draws on Musqueam, Secwépemc, and Syilx ways of knowing, and the discipline of Western psychology. Compositing theories of mind from across their different cultures, Strain imagines the perspective of a child who contemplates the world from beyond these existing frameworks. Through figurative paintings, transformed into pictographs and set against photographic murals, Strain’s work proposes a way of seeing that suspends judgement and challenges divisions such as past and future, old and new, self and other.

Tracey Strain/Eustache, Eric Strain, Elliy-May Eustache, xʷəlməxʷ child.

Until May 17

Celebrate artists of Japanese ancestry in the Karasawa Gallery, many of which are Japanese Canadian Legacies Art fund awardees and/or artists who are exhibiting at the NNMCC for the first time. From traditional to contemporary art practice, the Umami exhibition shares the rich essence of the Japanese Canadian creative community.

Photo Credit:  Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre; Artist: Ken Mizokoshi

Until May 25

Beginning in the early 1980s, Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989) developed a photographic practice that refused categorization, cutting across cultural codes, gender norms, and artistic traditions. This massive show features the late artist’s expansive work in a collection that spans his career and the multiple facets of his identity.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Untitled (Hear No Evil See No Evil Speak No Evil), 1985. Courtesy of Autograph (London).