Offsite exhibitions are organized by the Gallery’s Preparator/Exhibition Coordinator and generally draw from works from the City of Burnaby Permanent Art Collection. Offsite exhibitions also present opportunities for emerging and local artists to present their work to a wide audience.
Two Burnaby library locations, Bob Prittie Metrotown Library and McGill Library, host these exhibitions.
Vitalities: Reflections on Landscapes by Toni Onley and Arnold Shives
December 18, 2025–March 23, 2026
Bob Prittie Library
6100 Willingdon Ave, Burnaby
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British Columbia-based artists Toni Onley and Arnold Shives each shared a love for landscapes at great heights –achieved by hiking, mountaineering, and even flying above them. Onley once said of their distinct approaches: “We see the same place but come up with very different imagery.” Vitalities brings together selections of each artist’s formidable career to offer reflection and repose in the face of the region’s impressive land, water, and skyscapes.
Whereas Onley’s ability to represent the vast, moody atmosphere of the provinces’ islands and mountains was opened up by flying seaplanes and ski-planes, Shives reached towering heights by climbing. Not only did their ascents differ—so too did their materials. Shives is renowned for his taxonomic representation of mountains, which he achieved through printmaking. Onley, on the other hand, sought to represent the subtle tonal qualities of light which evoked the sensibilities of mist and clouds, and became known mainly for his watercolour landscapes depicting British Columbia coastlines. Nestled within this contrast in their work is the shared inevitable emotional experience of being human and humble among nature.
Rain Cabana-Boucher: Proximities
March 24–July 6, 2026
Bob Prittie Library
6100 Willingdon Ave, Burnaby
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Proximities navigates the spaces that exist between everyday connection and disconnection. Through bodily mark making, repetition and obscuration, Rain Cabana-Boucher creates forms that seem to emerge through static. The drawings in this series were created alongside one another before being split apart. Through this exhibition, Cabana-Boucher explores the space between our relationships, questioning how we experience isolation while still being fundamentally connected to one another. Like these drawings, we can exist apart, yet we cannot exist entirely without each other. Cabana-Boucher’s work also gestures toward the liminal spaces of urban commons, such as libraries, that function both as places of gathering and of individual solitude. Proximities reflects on how we interact with these feelings of in-betweenness. What brings us together? As people gather both together and apart, the exhibition seeks to define the often quiet, contemplative space between—one that surrounds us in our daily lives yet often goes unnoticed.
Juxtapositions: The Work of Jack Akroyd
December 19, 2025–March 24, 2026
McGill Library
4595 Albert Street, Burnaby
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Born England in 1921, Jack Akroyd was inspired to move to Canada after serving for five years in the Royal Air Force. He eventually made a home of British Columbia, where he would support his life as an artist by working as a draftsman amongst other professions, often drawing inspiration from his jobs. Furthermore, two long journeys to Japan proved life-changing: his creative practice was deeply influenced by what he experienced overseas. His approach to perspective and iconography shifted immensely, and he developed a unique artistic style.
Through painting and drawing, Ackroyd depicted experiences of his day-to-day life infused with imaginative, otherworldly portrayals. The juxtaposition between the mundane, the unexpected, and the surreal in his work results in vivid tableaux that evoke places and cultures sometimes worlds apart. Whimsy appears across Akroyd’s oeuvres, with exquisite attention to details that build up intricate scenes into multiple co-existing storylines.
Sharyn Yuen: Suspended in Time
March 25-July 7, 2026
McGill Library
4595 Albert Street, Burnaby
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Sharyn Yuen’s series Jook Kaak documents the artist’s trip to her ancestral village of Namcheng, China in 1986 to gain insight into her family history. Each work documents a different stage of the journey, mirroring her parent’s own movement between Canada and China, before and after World War II. Referencing a bamboo knot and the idea of existing between two cultures, Jook Kaak investigates joy, overwhelming emotion and the importance of family in spite of distance, reading almost as a short novel—an apt sensibility for an artist who has worked extensively with papermaking.
Though grounded in personal history, Yuen’s work reflects a diasporic experience that may resonate with many Canadians, including separation impacted by historical events, the complexity of family dynamics and a kind of cultural suspension that provides no clear, taut answers. The historical distance from this series’ creation in 1980’s Vancouver only seems to amplify these concerns in a contemporary context.