Settle Down Not There
Gibson Switzer, Basement Workshop, 2025, Archival Pigment Print, Artist’s Frame, 50” x 40”. Courtesy of the artist.
Opening Reception: April 17, 6-8pm
Location: Gallery Gachet, 9 W Hastings Street.
Exhibition Dates: April 17–June 20, 2026
Featuring artists Vanessa Mercedes Figueroa, Phillip McCrum, Gibson Switzer, and Ian Wallace
'Settle Down, Not There' is guest curated by Gachet curator-in-residence Maya Rodrigo-Abdi. The exhibition will feature work from Vancouver artists Vanessa Mercedes Figueroa, Phillip McCrum, Gibson Switzer, and Ian Wallace. Parts of their practices will accompany each other for the duration of this exhibition, ranging from a derelict dreamhouse that has been raised from the dead, to the fractured sounds of voicemails recovered from a disconnected number. The series of separations constructed by these artists allow us to reorient our understanding of Vancouver, seen here as a site of social fragmentation that is predicated on economies of feigned absence.
Concepts pertaining to the displacement and attempted eradication of the body in the city will be engaged with by the artists through the use of strategies such as appropriation, roleplay, and accumulation. In this exhibition, regional expressions of experiences with isolation and entrapment form a case study for corporeal concerns that are experienced on a global scale. When brought together, their work reveals the colonial pursuit of domestic fantasies and capitalist ideals as a dubious game of cat and mouse. Settle Down, Not There’s dialogue with the recent past of settler defined vision and power dynamics embedded in local considerations of space, will highlight the often contradictory acts required for continued survival here.
The exhibition runs April 17–June 20, 2026.
