News

*Trigger Warning: acknowledgement of death, residential schools*

The Board and Staff of Access Gallery wishes to state our support for Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, and our solidarity with those demanding justice for the lives lost, autonomy taken, and cultural survivance disrupted as a result of colonial violence, specifically the legacy of residential schools and day schools.

We're thrilled to open our doors this summer to share our programming with you. Access is operated by limited staff, and in order to keep everyone safe within our capacity, we ask that you respect our COVID-19 safety procedures when you visit the gallery. Drawing on recommendations from Worksafe BC, but also considering our limited staffing capacity, we are implementing the following procedures:

As a Board and Staff, Access Gallery denounces the violence toward Palestinians by Israel. We send our care and support to Palestinians facing ongoing violence, and to those in our community with loved ones in Palestine, and with histories of displacement and dispossession as a result of this occupation.

In the ten months since publishing our statement of commitment to anti-racism, Access has been continuing this work as a Board and Staff, as well as undertaking our own individual learning. We remain committed to this work, and consider this an ongoing process to be mobilized with increased urgency. We acknowledge that our efforts are informed by the labour of BIPOC communities.

Updates on our commitments include:

As a Board and Staff, Access Gallery denounces the ongoing racial violence towards Asian communities around the world. We send our care and support to those facing ongoing racial, gender-based, and sexualized violence.

Pen-pal matchmaking is free to current members. Sign-up here! We will send you the address of your pen pal (along with some cute stationery to get you started) after that, it’s all you!

All matches will be made 2 ways, you will get someone’s address and someone else will get yours, creating the potential for 2 connections!

Arts Assembly & Access Gallery invite remotely-situated artists to apply to the Remote Research Residency (RRR). 

As BC numbers show a significant rise this fall, we're once again closing the gallery to support efforts to "flatten the curve" of COVID-19. We were fortunate to see Wanderings through to the end of it's exhibition run, and now head into a planned a downtime through December. Our PLOT residents, a collective of artists called YARA are developing a new online project, and we'll be working on two (non-exhibitionary) projects through the winter.

STUDENT CO-OP POSITION: Curatorial Assistant with Access Gallery

Deadline: Monday 16 November 2020, by 9:00AM PST

JOB DESCRIPTION

We're thrilled to open our doors this fall to share our programming with you. Access is operated by limited staff, and in order to keep everyone safe within our capacity, we ask that you respect our COVID-19 safety procedures when you visit the gallery. Drawing on recommendations from Worksafe BC, we are implementing the following procedures:

Access Gallery closed our doors to the public in March in order to support efforts to "flatten the curve" of COVID-19. In April we made the decision to postpone our spring exhibition to the fall. Turning inward during this time has allowed us to focus on the slow and thoughtful planning required of us in this uncertain time; to prioritize our mental and physical well-being; to model responsible community care; and to ensure the safest execution of our future programming.

Please see our Accountability Update to this work