To “Pause” is to access the safety of quiet before continuing on your journey. We pause before processing our emotions and suspending our realities through art in prison and on parole. Come honour the artistic creation of currently and previously incarcerated people at The Galley at Queen’s Park, New Westminster.

ART & Justice is a partnership between researchers at the UBC School of Nursing, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), and a network of Indigenous Elders, Peer Experts with lived experience of incarceration, and community activists and artists passionate about prison justice. Our mandate is to support the holistic mental health, wellbeing and dignity of people in prison through arts-based, Indigenous-guided community building. We aim to explore ways to improve and sustain the positive impacts of art and creative writing for incarcerated people, remain responsive to artist and storyteller needs throughout and following the pandemic, and collaboratively imagine additional ways to harness the power of storytelling for social change.

Exhibition Dates: May 8 – June 2nd, 2024

Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 10:00am – 2:00pm

Annette Nieukerk

The Long Road Home

May 9 – July 2, 2024

An Amelia Douglas Gallery solo exhibition by Vancouver-based artist Annette Nieukerk will explore the concepts of aging, memory, and identity within the framework of beauty standards.

From the Artist Statement:

“The multi-media paintings of Annette Nieukerk question the notions of beauty and identity within the framework of our culture. As a female figurative artist now in her seventies, the focus of her work is the aging body, challenging and breaking down stereotypes that equate beauty solely with youth and that confront a dominant negative perception towards aging.

Her latest series ‘the long road home’ evokes the sensuality and desire that can exist at advancing years, the intensity of emotion and intimacy pulling two people together, and the deep yearning for connection buried in the human psyche”