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Wednesday 12pm - 5pm Thursday 12pm - 5pm Friday 12pm - 5pm Saturday 12pm - 5pm

Open Space

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Open Space

Open Space is a non-profit artist-run centre situated on unceded Lekwungen territory in Victoria, Br

09/05/2026

Last Friday, Peter Morin and Jimmie Kilpatrick brought their ongoing participatory karaoke project to the Cameron Bandshell in Beacon Hill Park for an evening of music, joy, and collective voice.

Love Songs to End Colonization invites everyone to participate by taking the mic, singing along, dancing, clapping, or simply witnessing. Through the familiar language of popular love songs, Morin and Kilpatrick create space to consider colonization, decolonization, connection, and the power of coming together.

The project continues through an exhibition at Open Space, on view until October 3, 2026.

09/04/2026

Small Press Fest call for volunteers! We ar seeking volunteers to assist with set up or tear down and support exhibitors by watching their tables during the event on Saturday September 26th.

This is a fun, hands-on day to connect with local artists, writers and publishers. If you’d like to join us please fill out the form below.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSetGbZCxqurbT7LFOOJxDYrWd7pfEII1JyvnQFBKLMeqPG-GA/viewform?usp=header

Full Small Press Fest exhibitor announcement coming soon!

09/02/2026

Coming up: Inner Time. Join us at Open Space next Friday, September 11 for an intimate concert by clarinetist and bass clarinetist Liam Hockley, presented as part of the SALT Festival of New Music 2026: PROXIMITY.

Inner Time invites us to listen closely to the smallest details of sound: breath, resonance, overtones, texture, silence, and the physical presence of a musician in space.

The program features works by Ray Evanoff, Horațiu Rădulescu and a world premiere by Alex Matterson for bass clarinet and electronics.

Presented in the context of the ongoing exhibition Love Songs to End Colonization, Inner Time creates an intimate encounter between performer, instruments, electronics, and audience, reflecting SALT 2026’s central theme: proximity begins with close listening.

Friday, September 11, 7:30pm
Open Space, 510 Fort St, 2nd Floor

Head to the link in our bio for tickets and more information.

SALT Festival of New Music was created in 2011 by the Tsilumos Ensemble, in cooperation with Open Space.

08/29/2026

Last Friday, we came together for an evening of movement, music, storytelling, and conversation exploring identity, migration, aging, accessibility, resilience, and what it means to truly belong.

Curated by Vitor Freitas, Belonging brought together local artists Linda Raino, Embrace Arts, and Travelling Bodies, whose performances offered distinct perspectives and embodied experiences of belonging.

Through dance, storytelling, and dialogue, the evening created space to listen, reflect, and connect, celebrating the ways that community and belonging are created together.

Thank you to everyone who joined us and to the artists who shared their work, stories, and perspectives with our community.

Belonging was Vitor’s curatorial project during his time as Curatorial Assistant at Open Space.

08/27/2026

Starting tomorrow! Open Space will co-present Peter Morin and Jimmie Kilpatrick’s Love Songs to End Colonization, an ongoing participatory karaoke project that invites us to consider singing, joy, and collective voice as tools for social change.
Rooted in kindness, friendship, futurity, and a shared love of karaoke, the project repurposes popular love songs to critique, confront, and dismantle settler colonialism.

As the artists put it: “For those three minutes you are a star.” In those three minutes, Love Songs to End Colonization creates space to reconsider our relationship to colonization and the ongoing work of decolonization.

The exhibition will follow an opening performance at the Cameron Bandshell in Beacon Hill Park tomorrow! Friday, August 28 from 6–8pm, and an Artists Conversation with Peter Morin and Jimmie Kilpatrick at Open Space on Saturday, August 29 at 2pm.

Exhibition dates:
August 29–October 3, 2026
Wednesday–Saturday | 12–5pm
Open Space, 510 Fort St

Love Songs to End Colonization is co-organized by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Open Space, curated by Toby Lawrence, AGGV Curator of Contemporary Art; Doug Jarvis, Open Space Executive Director; and Tomas Jonsson, project curator.

08/26/2026

Friday August 14, we gathered at Open Space for the first event in Urban Ecologies, a new program exploring biodiversity, community, and the relationships between living beings within urban and surrounding ecosystems.

The evening featured a screening of Back to the Sun, a documentary following White River First Nation members, long-term residents, contractors, and newcomers in Beaver Creek, Yukon, as they work toward energy sovereignty in Canada’s most westerly community.

The screening was followed by a Q&A with John Vandermeer of Copper Niisüü Limited Partnership and Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé, Open Space’s Curator of Indigenous & Contemporary Art.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this first Urban Ecologies gathering!

08/25/2026

Archival Assistant Kym Aerts’ project is now live! Explore An Alternative Timeline a subjective reimagining of Open Space’s history drawn from archival materials held in the Open Space Artist Society Fonds at UVic Special Collections and Archives.

Over the summer, Kym explored more than 50 boxes of posters, correspondence, calendars, grant applications, and other ephemera, selecting documents that caught her attention and assembled them into an alternative timeline of Open Space.

Rather than presenting the archive as a complete or objective record, An Alternative Timeline asks how our perspectives, interests, and the process of selecting and re-contextualizing materials can create new meanings and new ways of understanding the past.

Explore Kym’s project on our website now!

08/24/2026

Join us this Saturday for an Artists Conversation with Peter Morin & Jimmie Kilpatrick. Following Friday night’s opening performance at the Cameron Bandshell, Peter Morin and Jimmie Kilpatrick will be at Open Space for a conversation about their ongoing collaborative project, Love Songs to End Colonization.

Founded in friendship and a shared love of karaoke, the project repurposes popular love songs to explore settler colonialism, decolonization, collective voice, and the possibilities of performance as a tool for social change.

The conversation will offer an opportunity to hear more from the artists about the ideas, relationships, and experiences that shape the work, and to learn more about the participatory karaoke performance and exhibition presented at Open Space.

Love Songs to End Colonization is co-organized by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Open Space, curated by Toby Lawrence, AGGV Curator of Contemporary Art; Doug Jarvis, Open Space Executive Director; and Tomas Jonsson, project curator.

Performance
Friday, August 28, 6–8pm
Cameron Bandshell, Beacon Hill Park

Artists Conversation
Saturday, August 29, 2pm
Open Space, 510 Fort St

The exhibition will be on view at Open Space from August 29–October 3, Wednesday–Saturday, 12–5pm.

Peter Morin is a Tahltan artist whose practice engages Land, Indigenous grief and loss, community knowing, and the creative agency and power of the Indigenous body through collaboration, performance, community, and land-based practice.

Jimmie Kilpatrick is a musician, writer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist based in Brandon, Manitoba, whose work spans music, writing, touring, and interdisciplinary practice.

08/23/2026

Volunteer call! We are looking for a volunteer or two from our community to help install our upcoming exhibition. If you are curious about what goes into installing an exhibition and would like to get some hands-on experience this is a great opportunity to do so. We are mostly looking for someone for a few hours this Thursday August 27th.

If you are interested, please reach out to [email protected]

Photo from the installation of If I May Digress: Richard Boulet back in November.

08/22/2026

Next week! Join us Friday, August 28 at the Cameron Bandshell in Beacon Hill Park for the opening performance of Peter Morin and Jimmie Kilpatrick’s Love Songs to End Colonization, an ongoing participatory karaoke project rooted in kindness, joy, futurity, and collective voice.

Repurposing popular love songs, Morin and Kilpatrick use karaoke as a methodology for confronting and dismantling settler colonialism. Everyone is invited to participate: sing a song, sing along, clap, dance, or simply witness and soak in the music.

The performance launches a new presentation of Love Songs to End Colonization, co-organized by Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Open Space, and curated by Toby Lawrence, AGGV Curator of Contemporary Art; Doug Jarvis, Open Space Executive Director; and Tomas Jonsson, project curator.

Following the opening performance, join us at Open Space for an Artists Conversation with Peter Morin and Jimmie Kilpatrick on Saturday, August 29 at 2pm, followed by the exhibition on view through October 3.

Performance
Friday, August 28, 6–8pm
Cameron Bandshell, Beacon Hill Park

Artists Conversation
Saturday, August 29, 2pm
Open Space, 510 Fort St

Exhibition
August 29–October 3
Wednesday–Saturday, 12–5pm
Open Space, 510 Fort Street

Image credit: Peter Morin and Jimmie Kilpatrick, Love Songs to End Colonization, 2019-ongoing, participatory karaoke performance. Photo by Ashok Mathur, courtesy of the artists.

Address

510 Fort Street, 2nd Floor
Victoria, BC
V8W1E6

Opening Hours

Wednesday	12pm - 5pm
Thursday	12pm - 5pm
Friday	12pm - 5pm
Saturday	12pm - 5pm

Telephone

+12503838833

Website

http://www.openspace.ca/

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