[BCMA] Kamloops Art Gallery Media Release | In the rear-view mirror TRU BFA retrospective opens September 19

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Xiao Han, Yee Clun's Lost Story, 1 (detail), 2017, digital photograph, 101 x 101cm. Photo courtesy of the artist.

MEDIA RELEASE

For immediate release from
Kamloops Art Gallery
September 16, 2026

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Kamloops Art Gallery recognizes the legacy of TRU’s recently closed Fine Arts Program

In the Rear-view Mirror
Dieddo // Garnet Dirksen // Anyssa Fortie // Dion Fortie // Ryland Fortie // Levi Glass // Xiao Han // Robin Hodgson // Steph Patsula

The Cube
September 19, 2026 to January 9, 2027

On September 26, Kamloops Art Gallery will celebrate with an opening reception for In the Rear-view Mirror featuring past graduates of the now closed Thompson Rivers University Bachelor of Fine Arts program. Visitors are invited to join in a casual reception in the Studios and the Atrium with live music, an art-making area, beer sponsored by Bright Eye Brewing, and wine sponsored by Privato.

Opening Reception
Saturday September 26, 6:30 to 8:00 pm
Free, All Ages

Since 2005, the Kamloops Art Gallery (KAG) has devoted one exhibition per year to the emerging artists of the Thompson Rivers University (TRU) BFA graduating class. When Craig Willms began as KAG Assistant Curator in 2008, the BFA exhibition was the first exhibition he was given full autonomy to curate in The Cube. For the past 18 years, Willms has worked with a graduating student of the TRU BFA class every fall to realise a professional exhibition outside the context of art school. Over the years, the exhibition format has evolved, beginning with selected works that followed a conceptual thread in that year’s group of graduates. The current project model began in 2013, challenging emerging artists to create a new body of work and encouraging experimentation within their artistic practice.

Together, this selection of artwork, reflects practices that were nurtured by the intensely supportive and committed faculty who formed TRU’s uniquely generative Fine Arts program and is representative of a cohort of artists who continue to take risks, ask questions, and find ways to express themselves through their practice.

The nine artists in this exhibition represent only a small selection of the many TRU BFA graduates who have continued to work as professional artists, arts workers, and creative professionals; they demonstrate the significant far-reaching and expansive impacts of this program and its graduates. The work in this exhibition illustrates varying approaches to a chosen medium, both embracing and challenging artistic traditions in photography, painting, sculpture, and performance. The exhibition brings together diverse research-based practices, incorporating explorations of cultural identity; mythology and popular culture; technological dependence; disposable culture; masculinity and transformation; motherhood; colonization; and notions of place.


Media Information
Craig Willms, Curator
250.377.2406
cwillms at kag.bc.ca

About the Kamloops Art Gallery
The Kamloops Art Gallery, established in 1978, is situated on the unceded and unsurrendered lands of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc within Secwepemcúl’ecw, the traditional territory of the Secwépemc people. The largest art gallery in Secwepemcúl̓ecw (the Interior of British Columbia), the Gallery offers national caliber art experiences through a diverse range of accessible and affordable exhibitions, talks, tours, and studio-based programming for all ages and abilities, and boasts a collection of over 3,000 works of art.




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CRAIG WILLMS [he/him]
ASSISTANT CURATOR

cwillms at kag.bc.ca<mailto:cwillms at kag.bc.ca>
250.377.2400 ext. 2406


KAMLOOPS ART GALLERY
101 – 465 Victoria Street, Kamloops, BC  V2C 2A9
250.377.2400  |  www.kag.bc.ca<http://www.kag.bc.ca/>


The Kamloops Art Gallery is situated on the unceded and unsurrendered lands of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc within Secwepemcúl’ecw, the traditional territory of the Secwépemc people.

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