Summer/Fall 2025 Exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

The summer/fall exhibitions include Architectures of Protection; Meryl McMaster: Bloodline; and Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring, a film by Brianna Bear and Eli Hirtle.

Jessica Karuhanga, being who you are there is no other, 2018, two-channel video projection. Photo courtesy of KWAG, by Toni Hafkenscheid. Jessica Karuhanga: Blue as the insides, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, April 8 – August 6, 2023.

Architectures of Protection

May 24 – October 26, 2025
Curated by Toby Lawrence, AGGV Curator of Contemporary Art

Architectures of Protection reflects on ideas and modes of protection and refuge – with regards to oneself, to community, knowledge, culture, identity, and land. What are these spaces and practices? What is protection for some and not for others? Together, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and in the current global social and political climate, the artworks in Architectures of Protection direct critical attention towards systems and structures that shape and impact every day and sacred environments and encounters, alongside individual and collective relationships with the land.

This exhibition features artworks by Dana Claxton, Jessica Karuhanga, Emilio Rojas, Beth Stuart, and France Trépanier.

Meryl McMaster, The Grass Grows Deep, 2022, Giclée Print, 40″ x 60″. Courtesy of the artist, Stephen Bulger Gallery, and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain.

Meryl McMaster: Bloodline

June 18 – October 19, 2025
Curated by Sarah Milroy, Chief Curator, McMichael Canadian Art Collection and Tarah Hogue, Curator (Indigenous Art), Remai Modern

Meryl McMaster: Bloodline is a survey exhibition of a remarkable Canadian artist whose pioneering large-scale photographic works reflect her mixed Plains Cree/Métis, Dutch, and British ancestry. This exhibition looks back to McMaster’s past accomplishments and brings us up to date on her current explorations of family histories, in particular those of her Plains Cree female forebears from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in present day Saskatchewan.

The exhibition features photographs across six bodies of work, evoking themes of memory, containment, erasure, and self-determination. McMaster’s most recent series in this exhibition, Stories of My Grandmothers (2022-2023) highlights the artist’s deep reckoning with her family’s history focusing on the lives and experiences of her great great-grandmother Mathilda “Tilly” Schmidt, great-grandmother Isabella “Bella” Wuttunee, and grandmother Lena McMaster.

In dialogue with McMaster’s large-scale photographs, the exhibition includes two new video-based works titled Niwaniskân isi Kiya | I Awake to You (2023) and Nipēhtēnān Kiteh | We Can Hear Your Heartbeat (2023).

Brianna Bear and Eli Hirtle, Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring, still, 2018, 4k single-channel video. Courtesy of the artists.

Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring

June 18 – October 19, 2025
A film by Brianna Bear and Eli Hirtle
Curated by Toby Lawrence, AGGV Curator of Contemporary Art

The film, Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring, by Brianna Bear and Elia Hirtle, was collaboratively created in order to share a brief history and overview of the Lekwungen territory; the land we work, live and play on. The artists want to centre the Indigenous knowledge of, connections to, and responsibility for these lands. Their hope is that this film will help people gain a deeper understanding of and respect for the culture, language, traditions and history of this territory, which have been nearly erased and under attack in many ways since first contact with Europeans, and subsequent settlement of this area.

To show how the territory and people of this land are still thriving, the artists interviewed Songhees community members Cheryl Bryce, Joan Morris, and Skip, Butch and Bradley Dick, so they could share their knowledge, stories, and teachings about the lands and waters, which are now known by its colonial name, Victoria. As Butch Dick says in the film, “The most important thing you can do is learn as much as you can about Lekwungen people, because this is our land.”

About the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

With over 22,000 works of art, the AGGV has the largest public collection in British Columbia, including the most important collection of Asian art in Western Canada.

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria connects people and art to build a better understanding of our world. We are an accessible gathering place for people to experience art through exhibitions, programs, and other media and to create spaces for conversation and learning. We responsibly steward the collections for future generations.

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is located on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples, today known as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. We extend our appreciation for the opportunity to live and learn on this territory.

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