The Vault Gallery, Victoria
The Canadian art landscape is ever-changing. Places + Spaces keeps you informed of established and upcoming exhibition venues throughout the country, including museums, galleries, artist-run centres and more. This month, we hear from Leanne Olson, curator of The Vault Gallery in Victoria.
What is the history and mandate of your gallery?
Liam O’Sullivan, Worry Lamps, 2024, installation view
The Vault Gallery lies within the 780 Blanshard Building in Victoria, home to several galleries and nonprofits, and approximately eighty studio spaces for artists. It’s housed in a concrete bunker once used to store maps and later as a changeroom for staff cycling to work in this former BC Hydro office building. One must take a meandering route to get down there and make a definitive act to surpass the ramp and enter the heavy vault door. Some waltz in and some experience an element of discomfort. Some visitors exclaim enthusiastically, while others are hesitant and ask, “Is it okay to go in there?” Then they take a step, the art becomes visible, and the space transforms. That’s the mandate of The Vault: this moment of hesitation and transformation before and after an art encounter. The weirdness, the suspended strangeness, the incommunicable in a room with art.
The Vault has been running for almost three years and has put on thirty-three shows. It was started by Laveen Gammie, University of Victoria Visual Arts student-now-alumnus, who was looking at renting a studio, toured the building, saw this oddity of a space, and then decided what was really needed was for her to curate exhibitions. She put on many and the space flowed with ease. Mid-2022, The Vault was absorbed into VIVAS (the Vancouver Island Visual Arts Society), a non-profit that manages the arts hub The Vault is housed within. I (Leanne Olson) began curating the space when Laveen moved away for grad school.
What’s your favourite part of running an art gallery?
Planning stages for the Cogito video show, February 2024
Back to this moment of being in the space, passing through the vault door, there’s a lightbulb that tends to go off – eyes that glint when an artist imagines a show, a viewer feels something, a conversation is hatched, and to be in the room during that moment, with another human or say with thirteen video artists coming to a communal resolve…. That is why I keep making and showing art.
The space creates a way for artists to spend dedicated time in our arts hub of a building and feel connected to a community, which aids, in a small way, in envisioning a creative civic continuity.
How do you find out about new artists?
Derk Wolmuth, Fibrillation, 2024, installation view
This is less about the art world and more about what is happening all around us already all of the time. How can we support who is nearby? Who is making work upstairs out of a salvaged water tank that would fit in The Vault? (April Winter in 2023.) Who is down the block working with starter motors and several ropes? (Derk Wolmuth in 2024.) Who is projecting the anteroom into the vault on a tiny screen next to a rotisserie chicken? (Nick Patterson in 2022.)
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Jasper van Alderwegen, Tree (Passive Amplifier), 2023, artificial bird, cardboard, iPad, iPods, iPhones, paint, sound
Our aspirations and dreams are that arts funding and resources persist to keep transforming this space during a time where art-making is precarious and impermanence is the norm. We hope to keep working with artists in pivotal moments seeking a space of trust and ease to spend time in and show their work.
What excites you about your upcoming exhibitions?
Puppets Forsaken, Noiseblau, 2025, installation view
Currently there are several dozen sheets of plywood with rickety chairs and a bucket of saws attached to handles in our upcoming exhibition Noisebau presented by Puppets Forsaken. There’s a narrow path through the gallery and a cacophony of sounds awaiting at the opening tonight (February 14), which we’ve aligned with our floor neighbours Ministry of Casual Living who have a synchronous show running called Picklehelicopterkitty. We’ve doubled our openings so there’s a six-hour window of attendance. That makes for some ripely brewing sparks of possibility, and that’s what’s upcoming and exciting.