By Robin Laurence

WESTERN {&} SONIA CORNWALL ROUNDUP Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, Jan 18-Mar 23 The group exhibition, Western, reflects on “the history of western settlement” and how it has “shaped the popular imagination.” Works include an installation by the artists’ collective DRIL, a video critiquing sexual stereotypes by Cornelia Wyngaarden and large-scale, colour photographs by Dana Claxton. Claxton’s Mustang Suite deconstructs popular cultural notions of “the Indian.” Roundup, an exhibition of paintings by Sonia Cornwall, depicts the everyday life and landscape of a Kamloops-area ranch.

MANABU IKEDA: MELTDOWN West Vancouver Museum, West Vancouver, Jan 19-Feb 16 Meltdown, executed in pen and acrylic ink, imagines a scene of sci-fi-style environmental catastrophe. Reflecting on the natural beauty of the West Coast and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster following the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, Ikeda has created an image of a huge, compressed metropolis of interwoven industrial, architectural and transportation forms, perched on top of a glacier catapulting down a mountainside. It is a riveting work, both in its subject and execution.

PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA: STUDIO WORK Artspeak, Vancouver, Jan 26-Mar 2 Born in San Bernardino, CA and based in Brooklyn, NY, Mpagi Sepuya completed an artist’s residency in Harlem in 2011-12, resulting in this photo-based work and installation. His project includes a volume of photographs, formal portraits and snapshots of studio visitors, still lifes, and objects and materials that accrued in his workspace. “The work explores how the studio environment, as site of creation, editing, and accumulation, affects and frames portraiture.”

ANTONIA HIRSCH: LIGHT TENDER Republic Gallery, Vancouver, Feb 1-Mar 2 A new installation by this smart, inventive artist brings together video and found objects in an examination of our understanding of “value.” Hirsch juggles beauty, economics and ethics in the context of the socially and environmentally controversial trade in cut flowers. She creates codified systems of floral hues and engages us – as marketplace flowers do – with colour and form, leaving us to sort out the moral complications for ourselves.

JOSE LUIS TORRES Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna, Feb 1-Mar 16 This Argentinian-Canadian artist makes site-specific installations from found and recycled construction materials, “referencing precarious architecture and the notion that life is a game of survival.” Visitors will encounter the work physically and experientially, making their way through his architectural space by trial and error, to think about our relationship with the built environment and how architecture directs our movements and behaviours – and differentiates public from private.

KELLIE TALBOT: AMERICAN LANDSCAPES Smash Gallery of Modern Art, Vancouver, Feb 1-Mar 2 With a background in graphic design, Talbot gained fame and acclaim as art director for Signal Snowboards. This show reveals that she deserves immediate recognition for her tightly focused, photo-realistic oil paintings. Talbot chooses segments of neon signs, vintage architecture, and neglected cemeteries as her subjects, finding hope and beauty in evidence of erosion and decay. American Landscapes is the first Vancouver solo show for this Seattle-based artist.

RAYMOND BOISJOLY Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver, Feb 28-Apr 6 This exhibition of new work by a fast-rising young artist investigates the ways in which diverse cultures and technologies speak to each other. Boisjoly scans televised musical performances – including one by Buffy Sainte-Marie – and captures 20 seconds of moving images within one digital print on photographic paper. Mounted on aluminum, the large-scale works possess a commanding, “almost psychedelic” presence.

CAMROSE DUCOTE Elissa Cristall Gallery, Vancouver, Mar 2-30 Although she has long been based in Vancouver, Ducote grew up in Colorado, and her art reflects the light and the landscape of that place. Applying thin layers of tinted acrylic medium, then sanding the surface down, scraping it off and building it up again, she creates mixed-media works on panel that are lyrical and inventive. “Chance,” she says, “plays a big role in my work, and I like to be surprised by the results.”

GRAHAM GILMORE: I LOVE YOU, IN THEORY Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History, Nelson, Mar 2-Jun 9 This show includes sculpture, mixed-media works, and text-based paintings selected from this acclaimed artist’s 30-year career. Gilmore’s recent word paintings are notable for using “humour and quick-fire wit to counter an undercurrent of loss, cynicism and discontent.” They combine the tropes of drip painting with a darkly funny spin on popular culture, social trends, and the vernacular language of love.

SHUVINAI ASHOONA: MERGED REALITIES Inuit Gallery, Vancouver, Mar 13-Apr 3 Drawing with pen and ink, coloured pencils and markers, this Cape Dorset artist has gained recognition for her depictions of Northern life and her fantastical, sometimes nightmarish images. Her simple yet eloquent quote, “Sometimes the pencil is stronger than I am,” indicates her unconscious mind directs much of her art making. The drawings reveal life in traditional Inuit hunting camps, her deep Christian faith and an exposure to pop culture.