Represented

Shawn Hunt

Shawn Hunt is a Heiltsuk artist born in Waglisla (Bella Bella), British Columbia. Hunt’s practice is directly informed by his Scottish, French and First Nations background and the visual culture and traditions that accompany it. He works with the traditional Northwest Coast design principle, known as formline, to create abstract, surreal, and sculptural artworks based on ancestral Heiltsuk Cosmology that often reference contemporary aboriginal life. Hunt is always seeking to push the boundaries of the art form, often combining non-traditional ideas with innovative uses of materials and motifs in his work. 

Geoffrey James

For over thirty years, Geoffrey James has been investigating Western society through two opposing themes: the ideal spaces – formal gardens and sylvan parks, and the sites that record the impact of culture on nature- the wastelands of mining sites, and the economic systems of a problematic international border. James’s photographs reverberate with a sense of history yet are solidly rooted in the present. His ability to locate human aspirations within built environments, coupled with a keen sense of pictorial structure, have allowed him to discover poetry and irony in both the planned landscapes from the past and in the visual complexities of our contemporary urban environments.

Jack Kenna

Jack Kenna’s artistic practice extends fluidly across painting and sculpture, often incorporating found images, objects, and text. Drawing partially from his material surroundings, his compositions are highly considered and incorporate unconventional juxtapositions, uncanny backgrounds and close-up cropping of objects of subjective and sentimental value. Kenna also makes great use of the extensive cache of online imagery to develop a vocabulary of motifs that are constantly appearing, morphing, and reappearing in his practice. Kenna’s works incorporate a broad range of techniques allowing him to use varied methods of representation. As a young artist, he is comfortable merging imagery from the history of still life painting with the archive of cell phone photography, allowing him to create works that convey the paradoxes inherent in the contemporary experience.

Devon Knowles

Devon Knowles investigates the histories, economies and social meanings of diverse materials – from denim fabric and aluminum to coloured glass and concrete. In moving such substances from their everyday context to a new environment, our appreciation of their properties and capacities becomes heightened. In working and reworking material, using traditional and contemporary fabrication methods, a rich language of the interplay of material and method emerges. As she engages with theories of perception, optical effects and tactility, alongside the direct act of making, Knowles encourages the viewer to access her work from a shared intimacy and sympathetic attentiveness.

Gwenessa Lam

Gwenessa Lam is a visual artist and educator. Her artwork stems from interests in perception and the compression of time and memory within images. Gwenessa received her BFA from the University of British Columbia and MFA from New York University. She has taught at New York University, the University of British Columbia, and the Alberta University of the Arts. She has attended residencies at Skowhegan, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Banff Centre.   Her work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art and the Queens Museum of Art in New York.  Gwenessa lives and works in Vancouver, BC and is currently Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Khan Lee

Khan Lee was born in Seoul, Korea. He studied architecture at Hong-Ik University, before immigrating to Canada to study fine art at Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. He works in performance, media, sculpture and drawing. His practice involves experimentation with form and process in order to express inherent relationships between material and immaterial content. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Lee lives and works in Vancouver, BC.

Erin McSavaney

Rob Nicholls

Rob Nicholls’ landscapes embody the transcendental effect of the natural world on the human psyche. Through textured brushstrokes, illuminated colours, and loose washes, his paintings are a synthesis of flora, fauna and geological forms that are charged with atmospheric conditions. These images emerge from his imagination and memories of a childhood surrounded by the lush vegetation of Vancouver Island.

His ethereal landscapes evoke visions of worlds that are beyond the physical and enter the realm of the subjective imagination. Expansive and kaleidoscopic, Nicholls’ works do not present a single spatial or temporal perspective; rather each of his environments offers multiple qualities of light, from the vibrant colours of dawn to the muted tones of dusk.

Philippe Raphanel

For over 30 years, Philippe Raphanel’s painting practice has been marked by an awareness and sensitivity to the natural landscape. Most recently, he approaches the idea of landscape from an atmospheric perspective, using line and colour to evoke imagery related to oceanic and celestial maps. Iridescent pigments coupled with hundreds of layers of alternatingly opaque and translucent colours shift with the viewer’s position and in response to light. The process Raphanel uses to create his paintings is extremely labour-intensive, taking years to complete individual pieces.

Hamed Rashtian

Hamed Rashtian is a Vancouver-based visual artist who focuses on creating a dialogue between various colonial histories through his art. Through his practice, Rashtian delves into a thought-provoking exploration of Iran’s rich cultural heritage, evoking contemplation on the ever-evolving interplay between history, collective identity, and the built environment.

Hamed Rashtian completed his MFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver and holds a Swiss Federal Diploma in Higher Education from the F+F School of Art and Design in Zurich. Active as a visual artist since 2006, Rashtian has had solo exhibitions in Iran, Switzerland, and United Arab Emirates as well as participated in many international group exhibitions.