Esker Foundation

THIS FRIDAY 🌳🍀🪵
Artist Talk with Johnathan Onyschuk
Friday 2 October, 6-7pm, free.

🖇🔗🖇🔗 LINK TO REGISTER FOR FREE TICKETS IS IN OUR BIO Esker Foundation

In this artist talk, Johnathan Onyschuk will discuss the ideas and processes behind Old Growth, his installation exploring the recurring image of the human face emerging from plant life and wood.

Drawing from a collection of anonymous folk art “spirit carvings,” Onyschuk combines found sculptures into intricate basswood reliefs where individual faces merge into dense, shifting forms. The talk will share insight into the relationship between historical carving traditions, collective memory, and the enduring human impulse to find ourselves reflected in the natural world.

🍁🍀🌳🍀🌳🍁

Images:

Johnathan Onyschuk, “Old Growth,” 2026.
Project Space. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Installation views and details.

Portrait of Johnathan Onyschuk.
Photo by: Cy Yang Smith.

On Saturday, October 3, join our friends at the as the sounds of pop's reigning queen and classical music's king meet in Steve Hackman's Beethoven X Beyoncé. The Orchestra is joined by a stellar guest vocalists and musicians, led by Hackman, the visionary conductor behind hit concerts like Brahms X Radiohead and Tchaikovsky X Drake. Don't miss Beethoven's joyful Seventh Symphony as the vibrant canvas for some of your favourite Beyoncé hits.

Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra

👋 Hello Vancouver friends! Now on view at Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia; Vancouver, dont miss this! Esker Foundation traveling exhibition "Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy" curated by Naomi Potter.

Until 6 DEC 2026

Jana Sterbak: "Dimensions of Intimacy"

Jana Sterbak has had a significant impact on contemporary art, artists and audiences for close to fifty years. This exhibition presents a selective overview of Sterbak’s practice, celebrating her pivotal contributions to art history and offering a rare opportunity to experience her work firsthand. Dimensions of Intimacy features innovative early work that pushes material and sculptural norms, wearable structures that merge object with performance, significant video and film work, as well as rarely exhibited artist editions, photographs and drawings from Sterbak’s own collection.

"Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy" is curated by Naomi Potter, and organized and circulated by Esker Foundation, Calgary.

The Belkin gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and our Belkin Curator’s Forum members.

Images:

"Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy," Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC, Vancouver.
Installation views. Photos by: Rachel Topham Photography.

Jana Sterbak, "Sisyphus II," 1991. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Photo by: Rachel Topham Photography.

Jana Sterbak, "Dissolution (Auditorium)," 2001-02. Photo by: Rachel Topham Photography.

The gallery will be closed on Wednesday 30 September in honour of The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. 

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Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy is on view at Belkin Art Gallery, UBC.

Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy – Things to do in Vancouver – Georgia Straight As one of Canada's most influential artists, Jana Sterbak has had a significant impact on contemporary art, artists and audiences for almost fifty years. This exhibition presents a selective overview of Sterbak's practice, celebrating her pivotal contributions to art history and offering a rare oppo...

PICK UP YOUR PASSPORT AT ESKER FOUNDATION
at the front desk!

📍🗺 Canadian Art Hop 🗺 📍
24 TO 27 September

Pick up and stamp/sign your Canadian Art Hop Passport at participating spaces to keep track of your weekend adventures and to enter the art hop giveaway!

Submit photos of your stamped/signed passport via DM to Canadian Art Hop on Instagram or Email your photos to [email protected] by 7pm on September 27, 2026.

Rules:

Participants must visit a minimum of 3 galleries over the weekend of  September 24 - 27, 2026 (in any Art Zone/ Route)

Email and Instagram DM submissions must be sent to The Canadian Art Hop by 7pm  September 27, 2026.

📍📍📍🐇🐇🐇

From coast to coast, The Canadian Art Hop spotlights the diverse and dynamic tapestry of arts through commercial galleries, artist-run centres, and public museums and galleries.

Embracing a multitude of mediums, styles, and narratives, the participating spaces are highlighted as hubs of creativity, fostering dialogue and engagement within their communities during the weekend and thereafter.

Visitors should expect great art, interesting programming, and to visit these spaces thereafter!

We are pleased to introduce and give a warm welcome to Kasia Sosnowski who joins the Esker team in the role of Gallery Assistant. 

On your next visit to Esker be sure to say a big hello!  

Kasia Sosnowski is an artist and arts administrator from southern Alberta - she graduated with a combined BFA in Art History & Museum Studies, and Art Studio from the University of Lethbridge in 2014. She has previously worked at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, the Allied Arts Council of Lethbridge, and Medalta International Artist in Residence working in preparatory/gallery installation, artist administration, and community building roles. She graduated with an MFA in Sculpture and Ceramics from York University in 2023.

In addition to her arts administrative and community engagement work - Kasia is a practicing artist. Her work takes inspiration from popular media, Saturday morning cartoons, and prop comedy where she uses humour and colour as entry points into her work. Sosnowski’s work explores the similarities between comedy and ceramic sculpture through the use of timing, tension, absurdity, and visual-gags.

As a q***r woman, living predominantly in conservative small towns, she understands the merit of using humour to address and encourage dialogue between disparate community groups. Despite working primarily in ceramics, Kasia Sosnowski is a multi-disciplinary artist working with textile, performance, video, drawing and text.

Esker audiences might recall Kasia Sosnowski’s wonderful ceramic sculptures that visually articulated the bodily experience of emotion in her August 2020 to January 2021 installation "SNEEK-E-PEEP’N” in the Esker Foundation Project Space. Find the exhibition here: eskerfoundation.com/exhibition/kasia-sosnowski/

🐇📍🗺 Canadian Art Hop 🗺 📍🐇
24 TO 27 September
We are participating

From coast to coast, The Canadian Art Hop spotlights the diverse and dynamic tapestry of arts through commercial galleries, artist-run centres, and public museums and galleries.

Embracing a multitude of mediums, styles, and narratives, the participating spaces are highlighted as hubs of creativity, fostering dialogue and engagement within their communities during the weekend and thereafter.

Visitors should expect great art, interesting programming, and to visit these spaces thereafter!

📍PASSPORT 🛃 🗺📍

Pick up and stamp/sign your Canadian Art Hop Passport at participating spaces to keep track of your weekend adventures and to enter the art hop giveaway!

Submit photos of your stamped/signed passport via DM to Canadian Art Hop on Instagram or Email your photos to [email protected] by 7pm on September 27, 2026.

Rules:

Participants must visit a minimum of 3 galleries over the weekend of  September 24 - 27, 2026 (in any Art Zone/ Route)

Email and Instagram DM submissions must be sent to The Canadian Art Hop by 7pm  September 27, 2026.

⚘️ Photos by: Elyse Bouvier.

Like everything alive that we try to hold forever

September 25 – December 19, 2026
11:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 West 14th Street New York, NY 10011

Travelling exhibition at Pratt Manhattan Gallery on 14th Street.

"Like everything alive that we try to hold forever"

Curated by Elizabeth Diggon, Naomi Potter, and Shauna Thompson

September 25–December 19, 2026
Opening Reception:
Thursday, September 24, 2026, 6–8pm

Larry Achiampong & David Blandy
Diane Borsato
Stephanie Dinkins
Bridget Moser
Sondra Perry
Miya Turnbull

“Like everything alive that we try to hold forever” brings together seven artists whose works, in a broad sense, reflect ways that our human bodies exist in relation to non-human objects and the complex, interconnected ways that these objects, through their systemic collection, consumption, and contextualization, impact our understanding of self and others.

The works here address our psychosocial relationships to materiality, responding to the embedded identities, biases, and harms entrenched within science, technology, and museological collections that are often cloaked under the guise of logical neutrality. Through a constellation of approaches, the exhibition draws parallels between these realities, presenting objects and avatars as channels that access the limits of human experience, push against it, or gesture toward a transhuman future.

“Like everything alive that we try to hold forever” is curated by Elizabeth Diggon, Naomi Potter, and Shauna Thompson. The exhibition is organized by Esker Foundation and produced as a traveling exhibition by Independent Curators International (ICI). Funding for the exhibition tour has been provided by the generous support from ICI’s International Forum and the ICI Board of Trustees.

www.pratt.edu/events like-everything-alive-that-we-try-to-hold-forever/

Images:

Opening of the exhibition "Like everything alive that we try to hold forever," 2023. Esker Foundation.
Photos by: Elyse Bouvier.