“Commercial St.” opens at Nanaimo Art Gallery

For the exhibit, Roy-Bois met with many shop owners and Commercial Street regulars to add elements from their experiences with the street to his artwork. (Lauryn Mackenzie/CHLY 101.7FM)

Nanaimo’s very own Commercial Street is being highlighted in the newest exhibit at the Nanaimo Art Gallery.

Titled Commercial St., artist Samuel Roy-Bois takes inspiration from architecture, streetscape elements, and community from the downtown street.

The exhibit opens on October 24 and will run until January 4 of next year.

CHLY met with Roy-Bois ahead of the opening outside of the Nanaimo Art Gallery on Commercial Street.

He said the idea for the exhibit came after speaking with Nanaimo Art Gallery curator Jesse Birch, who had been organizing a number of exhibitions this year around the notion of play. This was part of the gallery's inquiry into “How can we play together?”

“So I came and spent some time here, and I knew that I wanted to work with other people and to play with them,” Roy-Bois said. “I wasn't sure at first how I would structure that play, and after spending some time here, I realized that Commercial Street could be a good way to kind of limit the scope of the exhibition and to give it some focus. So I decided to take Commercial Street as an inspiration and as a guideline for this exhibition.”

He said he started working on this exhibit about a year ago, when he said there was still a large hole right in front of the art gallery due to construction for the Commercial Street upgrades that finished this summer.

Roy-Bois worked with local graffiti artist, “doktoer,” whose work (pictured here) can be found on the walls left from the former Jean Burns Building. (Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7fm)

“What I wanted to do was to mostly invite people who have direct experience of Commercial Street. So people who live here, work here, have a shop here, and have worked as artists on Commercial, find a way to invite them into the exhibition,” he said. “So the show is a reflection of all these different experiences that I have on this street and their own experience of Commercial Street as well.”

He said he knew he wanted to do the exhibit about Commercial Street during a tour of the downtown area when he saw the artwork left by local graffiti artist, “doktoer”, on the walls left from the former Jean Burns Building that burnt down in 2016.

Doktoer’s work is featured on some of the sculptures made by Roy-Bois for the exhibit.

For the exhibit, Roy-Bois met with many shop owners and Commercial Street regulars to add elements from their experiences with the street to his artwork.

Some of the pieces include a drinking glass borrowed from Mon Petit Choux cafe, a record from Fascinating Rhythm, antique objects from Red Shelf Decor, and shirts from Rumours Vintage Collective.

“It was quite interesting, some of them would understand pretty well what I was trying to achieve, could kind of picture where I was going with all that,” he said. “For others, it was more challenging to get them to understand why I wanted to purchase an old glass that I just used to consume orange juice.”

As well, the exhibit features old photos of Commercial Street that have been borrowed from the Nanaimo Archives, which is located nearby in the CIBC Arts Centre on Wharf Street.

Roy-Bois said while the exhibit is about Nanaimo’s Commercial Street, it’s also about any other Commercial Street found around the world.

“It's an object which is attracting other objects and attracting people, and people with the vision of what that Commercial Street should be,” he said. “So the show itself is a reflection of that phenomenon.”

As the exhibit opens soon, Roy-Bois said he wonders how people will react to the exhibit, as it is a perfect but also imperfect portrait representing a moment in time.

“It's my own experience of this place, but it's also my experience, which is mediated and informed by other people's experience of Commercial Streets,” he said. “So it's a complex thing. I think the show has this kind of looseness, and it doesn't come across as authoritative. I hope it comes as very welcoming and as free, so that people will understand that this is a very subjective representation of this place, and it's a loving representation of this place too, which is important.”

The opening reception for the exhibit is on October 24 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., with a film screening and exhibition tour with Roy-Bois and Birch on October 25 at 3:00 p.m.

More information about the exhibit can be found on the Nanaimo Art Gallery’s website.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.