Griffin Art Projects

06/18/2026

The countdown is on! Our next exhibition Cameron Kerr: Collecting the Unconscious will be opening this Friday, June 19th from 6 - 8PM at Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver! Join us for a unique exhibition experience this summer featuring TRAPP PROJECTS in collaboration with Griffin Art Projects. We will also have an Artist and Curator Walkthrough on Saturday, June 20th from 1-2 PM where you can learn more about all of the new works by Kerr.

Initiated by Andersson in 1997, TRAPP Projects is a curatorial platform on which to introduce local and international artists to as wide an audience as possible, while not being limited by the mandates of traditional exhibition spaces. Over the years, this project has led to collaborations with a wide range of people and spaces to highlight both emerging and established practices.

Cameron Kerr is a Vancouver BC based artist working with sculpture, painting, photo-collage, and found-object assemblage to explore modernist forms and everyday imagery. Through new original works and curated selection of works from local private collections Cameron Kerr: Collecting the Unconscious proposes an alternative understanding of the choices we make, how artists create and how collectors collect.

Visit www.griffinartprojects.ca for more details.

1174 Welch St, North Vancouver

Cameron Kerr: Collecting the Unconscious, Installation View, 2026. Photo: Tim Chang

06/15/2026

06/04/2026

This is the final weekend to experience Embodied Conversations: The Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection!

Join us on the exhibition's last day, June 7th, at 1pm for our final free guided tour of this special collection with our Marketing and Public Programs Assistant, Margaret Browning.

This small group tour offers a closer look into select works from this internationally significant collection. Whether you’ve visited before or are seeing the exhibition for the first time, this final tour gives you the opportunity to ask questions, share your perceptions and engage with this exhibition one last time.

We hope to see you there!

The exhibition features 40 works from the Montréal based Mauer collection, which includes photography, paintings and sculptures from an impressive roster of international artists such as by Lorraine O’Grady, Cindy Sherman, John Baldessari, Huma Bhabha, Frank Bowling, Glenn Ligon and Annette Messager. Often drawn to politically and socially engaged art, this exhibition will present a selection of works which represent the breadth of the collection.

Margaret Browning printing in the Emily Carr University of Art and Design relief and etching studio. Photo: Perrin Grauer

06/03/2026

Mark your calendars! Join us for the Opening Reception of Cameron Kerr: Collecting the Unconscious on June 19th from 6-8pm.

This summer from June 20th to August 23rd, TRAPP PROJECTS presents new works by artist Cameron Kerr in a solo-exhibition curated by Patrik Andersson. This exhibition proposes that there is a collective unconscious at play in the processes an artist engages in and correspondingly, in the way collectors collect through the artist's work exploring vernacular image systems, memory and canonical forms in a variety of mediums, including sculpture, painting and photography.
TRAPP PROJECTS was initiated by Patrik Andersson in 1997 as a curatorial platform on which to introduce local and international artists to as wide an audience as possible, while not being limited by the mandates of traditional exhibition spaces. Over the years, this project has led to collaborations with a wide range of people and spaces to highlight both emerging and established practices. Griffin is delighted to host TRAPP in its space, launching a unique collaboration between the two organizations that reflects in dynamic new ways on Griffin’s mandate to investigate themes of contemporary art collecting.

We hope to see you there!

Cameron Kerr, Voyageur, 2019, Archival giclee print (25 x 31 inches). Edition of 5 + 3 artist proofs. Collection: Jean MacRae & Joe Filippone. Image Courtesy the artist and Trapp Projects

06/02/2026

As a farewell to Embodied Conversations: The Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection we have added one final free guided tour on the last day of this exhibition, June 7th at 1pm!

Led by our Young Canada Works Marketing and Public Programs Assistant, Margaret Browning this small group tour offers a closer look into select works from this internationally significant collection and the opportunity to ask questions and share your own thoughts and perceptions about this special collection!

The exhibition features 40 works from the Montréal based Mauer collection, which includes photography, paintings and sculptures from an impressive roster of international artists such as by Lorraine O’Grady, Cindy Sherman, John Baldessari, Huma Bhabha, Frank Bowling, Glenn Ligon and Annette Messager. Often drawn to politically and socially engaged art, this exhibition will present a selection of works which represent the breadth of the collection.

This exhibition will be on view until June 7th.
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We are grateful for the ongoing support of North Vancouver Recreation and Culture () and the Freybe Foundation.

Embodied Conversations, Opening Reception, January 2026. Photo: Jefferson Alade

05/25/2026

On view until June 7 - Embodied Conversations: The Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection

In his primarily text-based practice, Glenn Ligon (born 1960) explores questions of language, race, sexuality, and identity in American history, often using found texts from writings by cultural figures such as James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison, and speech from cultural icons like the late stand-up comedian Richard Pryor. In Silver the Future #4, oil stick is pushed through a stencil to write text onto a silver canvas. The text in this image is from a joke by Richard Pryor whose caustic humour describes an all too familiar assertion which Ligon isolates on a silver background so as to heighten its potency.

Embodied Conversations features 40 works from the Montréal based Lillian and Billy Mauer collection and includes photography, paintings and sculptures from an impressive roster of international artists such as by Lorraine O’Grady, Cindy Sherman, John Baldessari, Huma Bhabha, Frank Bowling, Glenn Ligon and Annette Messager. The Mauers are often drawn to politically and socially engaged art as well as sculpture, which is evident in curator Lesley Johnstone’s careful selection of works.
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We are grateful for the ongoing support of North Vancouver Recreation and Culture () and the Freybe Foundation.

Glenn Ligon, Silver the Future #4, 2013. Acrylic and oil stick on canvas; 81.3 x 81.3 cm. Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection. © Glenn Ligon. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Thomas Dane Gallery.

Embodied Conversations, Installation view, 2026. Photo: Byron Dauncey

05/22/2026

Join us for the final guided tour of our current exhibition, Embodied Conversations: The Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection on May 24th at 1pm!

Led by our Young Canada Works Marketing and Public Programs Assistant, Margaret Browning this small group tour offers a closer look into select works from this internationally significant collection and the opportunity to ask questions and share your own thoughts and perceptions about this special collection!

The exhibition features 40 works from the Montréal based Mauer collection, which includes photography, paintings and sculptures from an impressive roster of international artists such as by Lorraine O’Grady, Cindy Sherman, John Baldessari, Huma Bhabha, Frank Bowling, Glenn Ligon and Annette Messager. Often drawn to politically and socially engaged art, this exhibition will present a selection of works which represent the breadth of the collection.

This exhibition will be on view until June 7th.
________

We are grateful for the ongoing support of North Vancouver Recreation and Culture () and the Freybe Foundation.

Embodied Conversations, Tour, May 2026. Photo: Tim Chang

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #468, 2008. Chromogenic colour print; 70.3 x 54 in. Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection. Edition: 5/6 + 1 AP Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Angela Grauerholz. Les Invalides, 1989. Azo dye print. 47 x 64 in. Edition: 3/3. Angela Grauerholz. Courtesy of the artist.

05/21/2026

On view until June 7 - Embodied Conversations: The Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection

American artist Lorraine O’Grady (1934-2024) has worked across multiple mediums to create conceptual projects that interrogate issues of identity, class, gender, and social structure. Her work explores how people are defined in opposition to one another by opening up performative spaces that invite collaboration and connection. This selection of eight photographs, from a series of forty, documents a performance in which O’Grady created a float topped with a giant gilded frame and on the base of which was written “Art Is…” for Harlem’s African American Day Parade in September 1983. She tasked 15 young actors and dancers, dressed in white, with bringing gold frames to spectators, who enthusiastically partook in framing themselves for the camera. In this collective celebration, O’Grady offers the parade-goers a space in which they become the subject of the artwork, and because the photographs themselves were taken by onlookers, they also become the art makers. While the vast majority of the subjects of the photographs were African American, the inclusion of a white police officer broke down certain hierarchical boundaries, if only for a moment: “That’s right, that’s what art is, WE’re the art!”

The exhibition features 40 works from the Montréal based Mauer collection, which includes photography, paintings and sculptures from an impressive roster of international artists. Often drawn to politically and socially engaged art, this exhibition presents a selection of works which represent the breadth of the collection.
________

We are grateful for the ongoing support of North Vancouver Recreation and Culture () and the Freybe Foundation.

Lorraine O'Grady, Art Is. . . (Women in Crowd Framed), 1983/2009.
Lorraine O'Grady, Art Is. . . (Man with Rings and Child), 1983/2009.
Lorraine O'Grady, Art Is. . . (Nubians), 1983/2009.
Courtesy of the Lorraine O’Grady Trust and Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City). © 2025 Lorraine ’Grady/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Embodied Conversations, Installation view, 2026. Photo: Byron Dauncey

05/18/2026

On view until June 7 - Embodied Conversations: The Lillian and Billy Mauer Collection

Lorna Simpson (born 1960) considers the body as the locus where questions about the nature of representation, identity, gender and race concentrate. By appropriating imagery from vintage magazines such as Jet and Ebony, she explores representations of Black women, the context in which they arose, and how they exist in contemporary society. In the diptyque Outline, Simpson refuses portraiture, offering rather a rectangular arrangement of three braids of hair, and a woman who turns her back to the camera. Early ethnographic photography is alluded to here. The addition of texts (back, lash, bone, ground, ache and pain) in the form of office door labels complexifies the images, offering at once poetic and highly resonant historical references: back-lash, back-bone, back-pain. The artist is calling forth images of the abuse, suffering and exploitation of African-American men and women due to slavery, racism and sexism. Simpson’s figure stands strong however, presenting a stance of rebellion and resilience.

The exhibition features 40 works from the Montréal based Mauer collection, which includes photography, paintings and sculptures from an impressive roster of international artists such as by Lorraine O’Grady, Cindy Sherman, John Baldessari, Huma Bhabha, Frank Bowling, Glenn Ligon and Annette Messager. Often drawn to politically and socially engaged art, this exhibition presents a selection of works which represent the breadth of the collection.
________

We are grateful for the ongoing support of North Vancouver Recreation and Culture () and the Freybe Foundation.

Lorna Simpson. Outline, 1990. 2 silver gelatin prints, 2 engraved plastic plaques. 49 x 84 in. Edition: 1/4 + 2 APs. © Lorna Simpson. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Embodied Conversations, Installation views, 2026. Photo: Byron Dauncey