Fort Gallery, Fort Langley, BC
The Canadian art landscape is ever-changing. Places + Spaces keeps you informed of established and up-and-coming exhibition venues across the country including museums, galleries, artist-run centres, and more. This month, we hear from Sora Park, Exhibition Chair of Fort Gallery, a mobile artist-run centre in and around Fort Langley, BC.
What is the history and mandate of your gallery?
Left: Michaela Bridgemohan, soot stain on the pillow case, 2023, installation view
Right: Dion Smith-Dokkie, sunbeams softer forever, 2023, installation view
Fort Gallery was founded in 2006 as an artist co-op, providing a space for experimental, non-commercial art practice in the Langley area. In 2019, the co-op was dissolved, and Fort Gallery became the first and only artist-run centre in the Fraser Valley. In 2022, after seventeen years of exhibiting contemporary art in its heritage building in the heart of Fort Langley, the gallery moved out of its beloved space to begin a new venture as a mobile artist-run centre. Responding to growing online engagement and the challenges of maintaining a physical gallery in a post-COVID world, the board determined that going mobile offered a way to embrace experimentation and reimagine Fort Gallery for the present moment.
Today, Fort Gallery continues to present engaging, challenging, and thought-provoking contemporary art throughout the Fraser Valley in alternative and public spaces.
What’s a highlight of the neighbourhood where the gallery is located?
Paint pouring workshop by Sang Chul Nam
One of the most exciting aspects of being a mobile artist-run centre is that we are not tied to a single neighbourhood or space. We have hosted our programming in a wooden barn where cats roam freely amongst the artworks, as well as in a historic community hall where people often step into our exhibitions out of curiosity after spending their morning at a nearby farmers’ market on the weekend.
What’s your favourite part of running an art gallery?
Michaela Bridgemohan, soot stain on the pillow case, 2023, installation view
Definitely meeting the artists and learning from them throughout the entire exhibition process, such as doing studio visits, brainstorming installation ideas, holding workshops with community members, and participating in artist talks. All the artists the gallery has worked with come from diverse cultural and creative backgrounds, and collaborating with them to present their art practices in non-traditional, non–white cube spaces has allowed both the gallery and the artists to think outside the box.
I also love working with the extremely dedicated board members who run the gallery together. Running an artist-run centre without a permanent space, and relying heavily on funding from various granting bodies, is not always smooth sailing, but I am inspired by the board members’ consistent commitment and passion for the arts.
How do you find out about new artists?
Sang Chul Nam, Hacking the Third Wave II, 2024, installation view
We have an open call for submissions, accepting applications on a rolling basis. In addition to learning about artists through our open call, we’re lucky to have board members who are active participants of the art scenes in Metro Vancouver and beyond. Most of them are artists, educators, students, or arts administrators who stay curious and actively engaged in various creative activities, such as attending workshops and artist talks at galleries, or curating and exhibiting their own work in different spaces. Through this process, we meet many artists and build relationships with them.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Piñata making workshop by Francisco Berlanga
I want Fort Gallery to be recognized as a safe, supportive, and welcoming space where emerging artists feel encouraged to experiment with their art practice by trying something new and different. At the same time, I hope more local spaces and municipalities in and around the Langley area will show greater interest in hosting contemporary art programming with the gallery. While contemporary art can sometimes be seen as exclusive or esoteric, opening doors to our exhibitions and events creates opportunities for communities to come together, engage in dialogue, and connect through creativity.
What excites you about your upcoming exhibitions?
Gwenyth Chao
We are excited to have an interactive and experimental exhibition by a transdisciplinary artist Gwenyth Chao titled /stāj/ 3.0 in the beginning of September. We are transforming the historic Fort Langley Community Hall into an artist studio/laboratory/kitchen where Chao will create biomaterials she can then form into abstract sculptures. These biodegradable sculptures – shaped through techniques like pouring, folding, casting, and extrusion – are intentionally ephemeral, inviting viewers to reflect on cycles of decomposition, the commodification of both waste and art, and the uncertainty of knowledge itself.
As an interactive installation, /stāj/ 3.0 invites the public to step into the role of researcher, engaging in acts of cooking, art-making, and scientific experimentation. Visitors will be encouraged to draw from their own lived experiences, collaborating with the artist and each other to challenge binaries between scientific “objectivity” and other less valued ways of knowing.
Set within the historic Fort Langley, /stāj/ 3.0 opens a space for critical conversation, community engagement, and playful disruption of traditional knowledge systems. It is a mediation on access, value, and the ongoing work of decolonizing practices of making and understanding.