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Final week of World at Hand: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12–4pm. Closing Reception, Saturday July 25, 7-10pm.

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@aileenbahmanipour 's Cartography of a Typography (2025) is an iterative project inspired by the Women, Life, Freedom movement, which has sought greater political and religious freedoms for women in Iran following the murder of Mahsa Amini in 2022. Bahmanipour observed the events at a distance from Northern British Columbia. Isolated from her community, she began playing with black eyed bean sprouts, organizing them into the shape of the Farsi word for “Us” . As the fully grown plants wilted, she traced their shadows onto canvas with iron ink and acrylic, painting multiple superimposed traces of the word. The daily ritual offered her time to reflect upon what constitutes an Us across geographic and cultural distance. Bahmanipour chose the black-eyed bean because it conjures the image of a bruised face, reflecting the dangers activists in the movement confront daily. The paintings are messy, dripping and unfinished—much like the process of political and cultural change. 1-2. Aileen Bahmanipour, Cartography of a Typography: Us, 2024, 60 x 42 in. Iron ink and acrylic on canvas. Photo @nkphoto_____ 3. Cartography of a Typography process. Photo: @aileenbahmanipour by @palefireprojects

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Jesse Gray @graymetal is a seasoned scavenger who collects plastic garbage from beaches and shorelines around Nanaimo and other parts of Vancouver Island. She is drawn to bits of resilient debris that have become separated from the biodegradable elements of their utilitarian forms. Stripped of commodity value, the unique shapes, textures and pliability of each fragment become the subject of her assemblages, which she casts in bronze. Mesomonuments: Scrap Figures After Elza Mayhew (2020) cites Victoria-based modernist sculptor Elza Mayhew (1916–2004), who created monumental bronze sculptures and innovated a technique of hot carving polystyrene models. Meso, meaning middle in Greek, refers to a debris size classification (called mesoplastics in marine ecology) as well as the indeterminacy of Gray’s source materials, and the size of her sculptures– which are neither monument nor anti-monument. 1-3. Jesse Gray, Mesomonuments: Scrap Figures After Elza Mayhew, 2020. 3 x 3 x 3 in (approx–variable). Beach plastic & wax cast in bronze, sterling wire. Photo: @nkphoto_____ 4-9. Mesomonuments production photos. Photo: @graymetal by @palefireprojects

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In 2024, Danan Lake @danansthumbs was one of the community responders to the Argenta Creek wild fire that ravaged the rural community of Argenta, British Columbia. One of the few belongings sent out of the fire evacuation zone was a banjo that a farmer had handmade for his daughter thirty years prior. Part of Lake’s contribution included fixing the damaged instrument. His subsequent work Tubaphone (2025) is a collection of bronze forms that he cast from potatoes that the farmer gave him as a gesture of thanks. The gesture was significant because Argenta residents, including Lake’s family, have been gifted, traded or paid in potatoes by this man for generations. In Lake’s work, tubers—usually eaten, planted or composted—are preserved in bronze, making visible the plant’s social value. 1–2. Danan Lake, Tubaphone, 2025, 4 x 4 x 4 in each ie in(approx–variable). Bronze. Photo: @nkphoto_____ 3–7. Tubaphone production images. Photo: @danansthumbs by @palefireprojects

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The elements of Danan Lake's @danansthumbs Mushrooming (2025) were harvested or salvaged during the CommonOpulence residency in Demmitt, Alberta. The residency was hosted by artists Peter von Tiesenhausen @vontpete and Maggie Tiesenhausen @trepidationsss . “Born of the desire to build community, exchange knowledge and introduce artists to the Peace Region, CommonOpulence offers participants the chance to connect with each other and the surrounding environment. This idea is centred around collaboration, permeability and skill-sharing, solving conundrums and engaging in research as a sort of hive mind. Within this temporary land-based community, artists explore the unity between their practices, their daily routines and the collective life of the residency, considering the social, economic, political and environmental implications of this mode of being.” (Art Gallery of Grand Prairie) The hooks are made from metal salvaged from local industry, the bells from clay harvested from the edge of a swimming hole. The work was first exhibited at @doris_space_for_art 1-2. Mushrooming, 2025, 4 x 4 x 10 in each (approx–variable). Pit fired wild clay, forged steel, bailing twine. Installation view: Pale Fire. Photo: @nkphoto_____ 3-8. CommonOpulence, Demmitt, AB, 2025. Photos: @danansthumbs by @palefireprojects

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@kuhdelrosario collects fragments of natural and cultural materials and works them into the skins of her assemblages, which become evidence of her experience in certain places and times. idigit, there’s no place, and hip to waste ratio (all 2025) were made during a residency at the @badlands.art.department , along the Rosebud River in Treaty 7 Territory, Alberta. e program draws artists’ attention to the surrounding environment, which is informed by Blackfoot culture, coal and clay mining, natural gas, and paleontological and geological phenomena. Del Rosario approaches materials such as used denim, metal filings, clam shells, garter snake skin and wild clay with an animist perspective that is influenced in part by Filipino mythology and values. She is interested in the agency of the elements she works with and pays close attention to how they crack, shift, peel and stain over time. Observing how an artwork is affected by human and weather pressures is a means of understanding how an environment may be impacted by similar forces. 1. Under the Balete tree, 2025, 15 x 15 in. Bisqued clay, chicle, charcoal, indigo, ground clam shells, salt. 2. The palette carries things, 2025, 13 x 17 in. Bisqued clay, chicle, charcoal, indigo, ground clam shells, salt, glass, metal oxide. 3. there’s no place, 2025, 10 x 12 in. Used denim dyed with iron oxide, wild clay and pottery clay, metal fillings, ground clam shells, crushed rocks from the Badlands, indigo. 4. hip to waste ratio, 2025, 14 1/2 x 11 in. Used denim dyed with iron oxide, wild clay and pottery clay, metal fillings, ground clam shells, crushed rocks from the Badlands, indigo. 5. idigit, 2025, 13 1/2 x 8 in. Used denim dyed with iron oxide, wild clay and pottery clay, metal fillings, ground clam shells, crushed rocks from the Badlands, indigo, dried garter snake. Photos 1-5 @nkphoto_____ 6–12. Badlands Art Department, Rosebud River in Treaty 7 Territory, Alberta, 2025. Photos: @kuhdelrosario by @palefireprojects

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We’re thrilled to launch Reave Dennison’s first book of photographs "Under 60 Ton’s", next Friday July 10 from 7–10pm. Between 8–9pm Reave and Art Historian @andrew.c.witt will have a public conversation about the photographs in the book. We co-published the book with Information Office @infoofficeinc and it was designed by Reave Dennison with Derek Barnett. The book is available in Canada via Pale Fire & internationally via Idea Books @ideabooksnl (links in bio).Under 60 Tons documents the lived practices and working conditions of maritime labour along the Pacific Northwest coast. Between 2016–2024, Reave Dennison took black-and-white analogue photographs while employed as a crew member aboard small, versatile tug boats, which are classified as ‘under 60 gross tons’. The book features over 90 photographs that he took of crew members who navigate marine machinery, infrastructure and the elements, including hands on chart work, compass work and manual labour. The photographs are accompanied by handwritten, journal entries that express the vernacular language of the crew and Dennison’s reflections. by @palefireprojects

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World at Hand, featuring the work of Aileen Bahmanipour, Jesse Gray, Danan Lake, Christian Newby and Kuh del Rosario is open Thursday, Friday, Saturday 12-4pm until July 25. Photos: @nkphoto_____ by @palefireprojects

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Pale Fire’s summer exhibition "World at Hand,” featuring work by @aileenbahmanipour, Jesse Gray @graymetal, Danan Lake @danansthumbs, Christian Newby @newbychrist and @kuhdelrosario opens this Friday June 12, 2026, from 7–10pm.The exhibition runs June 12–July 25, 2026. NEW SUMMER GALLERY HOURS: Thu, Fri, Sat, 12–4 pmWorld at Hand gathers the work of five artists who are curious about the purpose, meaning and value of the natural and manufactured phenomena around them. Aileen Bahmanipour, Jesse Gray, Danan Lake, Christian Newby and Kuh Del Rosario draw attention to the potential of the tools, objects and elements at their fingertips, the stories they have become imbued with, and how playing with their composition, context or utility can expand these narratives. Photo: Danan Lake. Details via Link in bio. by @palefireprojects

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Tania Willard’s solo exhibition ‘Photolithics’ is open at the @polygongallery in North Vancouver until May 31, 2026. The title Photolithics (combining ancient words for light and stone) calls up Willard’s expansive notion of working directly with the sun’s changing rays, and with varied formations of soil, crystal, metal, and sediment. Willard considers photography as a medium and material that dates back millennia, not centuries. In her words, “Light has been making life, images, shadows, and reflections for billions of years. Those photographs are called stones – geological formations – the grandmothers and grandfathers embodied in the volcanic rocks used in sweat lodges.”The focus of this ten-year survey is her ongoing experiments with photography, as a technology of both colonisation and decolonisation, and is curated by Monika Szewczyk, Audain Chief Curator, with Serena Steel, Assistant Curator. Photos: @dennisha.photo by @palefireprojects

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@reave.dennison, “Juicer", 2024. Selenium-toned, gelatin silver print on fibre matte paper. The log juicer has a few applications, but in this situation it is used to remove dog lines from logs so that a beachcomber doesn’t have to knock his own gear. The juicer is then used to dewater the logs onto a barge, where they can be dry-scaled, graded and sorted. by @palefireprojects

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@reave.dennison , Jericho Beach Bundle, 2025, Selenium-toned, gelatin silver print on fibre matte paper.Friends of mine told me about a log bundle that broke loose and washed up on Jericho Beach. By the time I was able to get to it, Teddy and his buddy were there tagging his beachcombing license (LS) number on it and tying the bundle o to a tree. He came back later and pulled the bundle off at high tide. That was the first time I met Teddy. by @palefireprojects

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@reave.dennison, Teddy, 2025. Selenium-toned, gelatin silver print on fibre matte paper “If you are down at the docks talking about beachcombing on the West Coast, more often than not Teddy and his boat Nightstalker will come up. Teddy is a recently retired beachcomber who has salvaged on this coast his whole life. He told me that he started beachcombing when he was six years old; he used to dog logs, tie the line off to his leg, then tow them around in his row boat. He would sell his wood to his dad for three bucks a stick. The last time we spoke before he retired, he told me that he feels like an old cattle rancher in a place where there is no more cattle and no ranchland left. He wants to be buried in Nightstalker.” – Reave Dennison by @palefireprojects

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