Or Gallery
236 Pender Street E V6A 1T7 Vancouver, BC, Canada

The Audain Foundation, who are generously supporting some of our educational and outreach programming, checked in with us online:

Or Gallery and Bookstore will be closed from Wednesday May 19 Friday May 28 for end of year inventory. Please contact [email protected] for inquiries or specific book requests. Our Bookstore will re-open with regular hours on Saturday May 29. Our Gallery will re-open on Friday June 11 for our next exhibition, details coming soon.

Or Gallery joined our friends at Savvy Contemporary in Berlin to think alongside many artists, musicians and other thinkers on Derrida's 'Hostipitality' a few years ago and now it's documented in this publication by Savvy/Archive.

From March 30 to May 8, Or Gallery is pleased to present "If we say things simply", an installation in the gallery's street-facing windows by artists Phoebe Huang and Stephanie Gagne, curated by Asia Jong. This project is an index of the shades of yellow and gold found along East Pender Street, and in invitation to feel through colour when words fail. Look out for Phoebe and Stephanie's work on your walks through Chinatown, and stop in at the Or Bookstore, open Tues-Sat 12-5pm.

This Saturday (March 20) is the last day to see Gives-on-and-with: Decolonial Moves of the Transcultural, guest curated by Noor Bhangu. Come see the exhibition in its final iteration, with new work and readings by Mariana Muñoz Gomez!

Or Gallery is eager to announce the re-opening of our bookstore with a huuuuuge book sale! And a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Hogan's Alley Society!

Or Gallery will be closed Wednesday Nov 11 for Remembrance Day. Normal hours resume on Thursday Nov 12. We continue to comply with Covid-19 health and safety recommendations with gallery protocols to protect visitors and staff.

Please note Or Gallery will be closed on Tuesday Nov 3 and Wednesday Nov 4 for staff training days.

Dear Or Gallery members and supporters, the Board of Directors invites you to our 2020 Annual General Meeting on October 27, 5:30 PM, online. Attendees must be members in good standing so what better time to renew or buy your annual membership than now? To receive the meeting link, please register at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you! Regular membership $35. Student membership $15.

It is with deep appreciation that Or Gallery has received the 2020 Audain Prize! We are honoured to have been awarded this prize that acknowledges the integral role and history of artist-run centres across B.C. alongside our friends and peers at 221A, Access Gallery, Artspeak Gallery, Grunt Gallery, the Malaspina Printmakers Society, Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, the UNIT/PITT Society for Art & Critical Awareness, the VIVO Media Arts Centre, Western Front, Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, and Open Space Arts Society. This award is earmarked for upcoming education and outreach initiatives. Please stay tuned for what will be coming next.

Still from "Drawing Rights," 2018, Rachel O'Reilly

Today, Or Gallery reopens with "The Gas Imaginary" by Rachel O'Reilly, on from October 2 December 19, 2020. Alongside Or, Access Gallery, Centre A and Hotam Press are all open so why not make a trip down to Chinatown and stop by to see all of the fantastic exhibitions on view! When visiting the gallery, please keep in mind that our capacity is 4 people. We ask that you wear a mask and sanitise your hands during your visit (supplies provided). Please note the Or Bookstore is... currently closed and under renovations. - A multi-disciplinary project using poetry, collaborative drawings, installation, moving images, and lectures to unpack the broader significance of ‘settler conceptualism’, the racial logic of the property form and fossil fuel-based labour politics as capital reaches the limits of land use. In ongoing dialogue with elders of Gooreng Gooreng country and settler women activists, where fracking was approved for mass installation in ‘Australia’, new elements of this work address the threatened destruction to 50% of the Northern Territory. Image: Rachel O’Reilly with Pa.LaC.e (Valle Medina and Benjamin Reynolds), ‘Promethean Realism’ from the series Gladstone, Post-pastoral, 2016

A hearty congrats from Or Gallery to the SAVVY Contemporary Community upon the announcement that SAVVY co-founder/artistic director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung will receive The Order of Merit of Berlin for his critical and artistic contributions to the culture of that city and beyond. Or Gallery was grateful to work with Bona and the SAVVY crew on 'Whose Land Have I Lit on Now? Contemplations on the Notions of Hospitality' in 2018 and we will continue to be inspired by their brilliant work and ideas.

Or Gallery is closed for the summer while we make some improvements to our space and get ready to re-open in the fall. Follow us on instagram @orgallery and @orbookstore or sign up to our e-newsletter to get updates about upcoming projects. Have a great summer!

A big thank you to Joni Low for their thoughtful profile and review of Pao Houa Her's work and current exhibition in Vie des Arts Magazine. https://viedesarts.com/profils/pao-houa-her/ Come see the show for yourself! Pao Houa Her: Emplotment is on view at Or Gallery until Saturday July 18.

The last in our series of posts looking back at the observations and thinking on art, institutions and black life at our symposium in November 2019. Artists, writers, poets, musicians, activists and scholars came together to think about imaging Black lives, positions and futures against the extractive legacies of the visual canon and institutional culture. Bodies, Borders, Fields became a space to think together, to feel together, and to carry each other in support of Black ...lives and work. We would like to re-share some of those moments here with our communities. -Or Gallery and Trinity Square Video Excerpted Clip: Artist Kandis Williams' observations on Art/art's capacity to engender or deny black life and safety. Full documentation of Bodies, Borders, Fields panels and performances can be found here: https://www.bodiesbordersfields.com/resources

The open brutality against Black life and international protests for systemic change have yielded a barrage of upsetting imagery, with few uplifting and hopeful examples. While confronted with this, we remember how over a few days in November, artists, writers, poets, musicians, activists and scholars came together to think about imaging Black lives, positions and futures against the extractive legacies of the visual canon and institutional culture. Bodies, Borders, Fields be...came a space to think together, to feel together, and to carry each other in support of Black lives and work. We would like to re-share some of those moments here with our communities. -Or Gallery and Trinity Square Video Excerpted Clip: mouthfeel (S*an D. Henry Smith and Imani Elizabeth Jackson) work through culinary and poetic performance to consider the colonial legacy of the sea as site of sustenance, genocide and mourning Full documentation of Bodies, Borders, Fields panels and performances can be found here: https://www.bodiesbordersfields.com/resources

Or Gallery pledges to think alongside and work with our colleagues at Open Space against the systemic inequities that persist in the cultural sector and beyond. Please take a minute to read their full statement and show them your support.

Or Gallery has re-opened, but nothing will return back to normal. Beyond the time collectively taken today to mourn the many Black lives that have been lost and... destroyed by the violence of white supremacy. We consider it is both necessary and possible to act against anti-Black racism, anti-Asian racism and the violent legacy of Indigenous land dispossession and genocide every single day. See more