Fort Gallery

Five things worth knowing about Fort Gallery, in case you have been wondering where it went.

1. It is a gallery without a building, on purpose. From 2006 until 2022, Fort Gallery was a storefront at Glover Road and Francis Avenue in the heart of Fort Langley, seventeen years of contemporary art in a heritage building. In 2022 it gave the lease up and became what its own site calls a mobile artist-run centre. Since then shows have landed in the old library room at the Fort Langley Community Hall, in a wooden barn, and now in the lobby pop-up space at the Township’s new salishan Place. The board’s stated plan is exactly that: bring contemporary art to alternative and public spaces around the Fraser Valley rather than wait for people to find a door on Glover Road.

2. “Artist-run” means artists are in charge. The gallery began as an artists’ co-op. In 2019 the co-op was dissolved and Fort Gallery reorganised as an artist-run centre, which it says makes it the first and only one in the Fraser Valley. The board is made up largely of working artists and educators from Langley, Abbotsford and around, and programming comes from an open call that the gallery runs on a rolling basis. If you make experimental, playful or interdisciplinary work and want a show, the submissions page is the way in.

3. The shows are not landscapes of barns. Recent exhibitions include Gwenyth Chao’s STAJ, which turned the Community Hall into a working studio for biomaterial experiments; Sang Chul Nam’s Hacking the Third Wave II; and Michaela Bridgemohan’s Soot Stain on the Pillowcase. The November 2026 show by Reyhan Yazdani uses handmade pigmented paper and oil-pastel sculpture to think about language, displacement and the body’s tie to land. Expect ideas, materials and the occasional thing you have to ask about. Artist talks and tours usually come with each show.

4. Workshops are part of the deal. Alongside exhibitions the gallery runs hands-on sessions: a natural-pigment workshop in September 2026, a studio-photography workshop, paint pouring, piñata making, and a drawing workshop in oil pastels during the Yazdani show. They are listed under Events on the gallery site as they come up.

5. Membership costs five dollars. For life. The gallery is a registered society, and a lifelong society membership is five dollars, open to anyone whether or not they work in the arts. It gets you a vote at the AGM, a seat on a committee if you want one (exhibitions, fundraising), the newsletter, and early word on open calls. The Canada Council for the Arts is credited as a funder, and the gallery also takes donations.

Nearby

The Fort Langley Artists Group has its own page: Fort Langley Artists Group, the village’s long-running painters’ collective with a fall show at the same Community Hall. salishan Place, where the November show hangs, is at salishan Place by the River. For the City’s galleries and the Walkway Gallery at the Timms, see the Langley Arts Council.

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