Saturday, July 4th, 2026, 2–5PM
Informal exhibition walkthrough with curator Joshua Segun-Lean and artist Deanna Bowen at 2:30PM
Cash bar and snacks
Activities in the Tuey Art Studio
Free parking in SFU's North Parking Lot
This summer, our exhibition program is energized by an exploration of print media and the ways its circulation—whether appearing as posters on city streets, in the pages of newspapers, or in fine art publications, studios, and exhibitions—shapes a broad span of communities and their causes.
The exhibitions draw from the rich holdings of the SFU Art Collection and SFU Special Collections & Rare Books. They bring archival materials together for the first time and showcase the work of four formidable but under-acknowledged women printmakers active through the last four decades.
Curated by Joshua Segun-Lean, a recent MA graduate from SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts and the Gibson Art Museum’s 2025-26 curatorial resident, these projects uncover new research and a fresh perspective on our province’s tumultuous social histories.
Strategies of Assembly: Revel & Revolt in British Columbia
Strategies of Assembly presents print matter documenting over four decades of social, cultural and political life in this province, drawn from two collections held by SFU’s Special Collections & Rare Books: an expansive poster archive collected by Perry Giguere (aka “Perry the Poster Man”), and a series of photographs taken for the weekly Vancouver labour newspaper, the Pacific Tribune. A singular print by Black Canadian artist Deanna Bowen punctuates the installation.
Viewed together, these materials not only offer an historical overview of social life in BC. They also highlight enduring contentions between differing visions of the social itself, expressed through demands for better living conditions, struggles for fair wages and working hours, transparency in public spending, Indigenous sovereignty, ecological preservation, and freedom of expression.
Any such history of social gatherings is also, by definition, a history of exclusions. It is a history of those unable or unallowed to gather, and of those whose gatherings have been permitted under “special conditions,” never far from the threat of sanction, discipline, and violence. It is a history of events whose documentations, if any, survive in forms inaccessible here.
Generously supported by Arlene James, Vered Amit, Noel Dyck, and Friends of the Gibson.
Working Proof: Leslie J. Fawkes, Susan Gransby, Libby Hague, Anna Wong
Selected from the SFU Art Collection’s print holdings, Working Proof presents key works by four artists—Leslie J. Fawkes, Susan Gransby, Libby Hague, and Anna Wong—whose decades-long practices have consistently expanded the possibilities of printmaking.
The selections span an especially vibrant period of printmaking in Canada—between 1975 and 1990—when institutions such as the Malaspina Printmaking Society and the Print and Drawing Council of Canada, run by printmakers themselves, responded to growing public awareness of printmaking as an art form and furthered this interest through dedicated workshops and exhibitions.
Working Proof draws attention to the artist’s’ varied contributions to such institutions. Whether as educators, editors, or arts administrators, their individual printmaking practices went hand in hand with efforts to increase access to print education and to develop wider audiences for the medium.
Generously supported by Arlene James, Vered Amit, Noel Dyck, and Friends of the Gibson.
For this event, free parking will be available in SFU's North Parking Lot from noon onwards. No ticket purchase is necessary.
A map to the North Parking Lot is here.
A map for how to get to the museum from the North Parking Lot is here.
