January 2024 Arts and Culture Events in Metro Vancouver

While we all get our bearings on the new year, taking the month off socially and artistically is tempting. But we’d be missing so many creative opportunities throughout our local communities! We’re not saying you have to do an art crawl every day of the week, but it never hurts to make time here and there to support artists and curators in your area. These are just a handful of the events you should circle on your calendar as reasons to shake off your hibernation.

*Featured image: About De glace (From Ice) by L’eau du bain, as part of Push Festival

Guest curated by Xianjun Song,Neighbours features the works of Xiangmei Su and Jiangang Su, two highly accomplished artists from Suzhou, China, who have called British Columbia home for the past 10 years. Both artists draw on traditions from their place of origin, bringing with them expertly honed weaving and ink-wash painting techniques to create artworks that reveal the intricate relationship between place and culture.⁠

Various venues

Over the last two decades, PuSh Festival has grown to become the Lower Mainland’s signature, mid-winter cultural event delivering audacious, innovative, contemporary works of live art by acclaimed local, national, and international artists.

Vancouver Art Gallery

When Emily Carr (1871–1945) wrote about landscape paintings—her own and those of others—she would sometimes describe how an eye might move through the imagined space in the work. It is striking, then, that so many of her own paintings create an experience of dense, impenetrable forest that confounds such forward movement. In many cases, the viewer is tantalized with the opportunity of communion with a carefully observed natural environment, while simultaneously foiled in the prospect of imaginatively entering its depths.

Township of Langley Civic Facility

Taaye, a Hong Kong-born artist now based in Vancouver, creates art deeply rooted in personal experiences of family dysfunction, relationship and career upheaval, and the frequent relocations that have shaped her life. These turbulent experiences have prompted her to explore the themes of impermanence and the search for enduring truths. Through her multi-layered, hazy, and subdued style, Taaye’s work evokes an emotional journey of introspection and personal growth. She offers a window into her own questioning of life’s transient nature, challenging the viewer to confront what remains constant amid life’s inevitable changes.

Anvil Centre Community Gallery

This exhibit includes a collection of landscapes and abstracts from PotteryWorks Colour Collective studio sessions. The Colour Collective is a group of painters and photographers within the PotteryWorks studio that focus on the foundations of painting, colour theory, and the elements of design.  

Surrey Arts Centre

Open-hearted Isabelle is a lifelong romantic, but modern love isn’t like a pop song or an old novel—or is it? When her best friend, Kristin, embarks on a rebound romance, things get complicated as Isabelle’s “wingman” duties cross the line. This charming new comedy launches the mistaken identities of Cyrano de Bergerac into 21st-century Vancouver with millennial manifestos, dating apps, and the quest for self-love.

Audain Art Museum

The Just Paint Experience is a vibrant workshop focusing on artists and their creativity. By encouraging artists to observe their processes, the Golden team hopes to increase awareness and understanding of their needs, and present Golden Artist Colors as an inspiration and resource. Participants will explore new and innovative materials concepts in an open and collaborative atmosphere.

The Burnaby Art Gallery and the Art Gallery at Evergreen in Coquitlam co-present the exhibition Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell, an exhibition in 2 parts. Taking place across the 2 galleries concurrently, this exhibition contemplates Beer’s artistic research on the entwined relationships between humankind and our industries.