Founded in 2013, Wil Aballe Art Projects, which shortens into the onomatopoeic word WAAP, exhibits local and international artists, notably the innovative younger generation of Vancouver art practitioners. The program is comprised of a series of interdisciplinary, concept-oriented, and space-based exhibitions in a variety of media including sculpture, video, sound, painting, printmaking, photography, and performance. Its editions program features contributions by the brightest Canadian artists internationally and are coveted by collectors. The gallery operates somewhat nomadically, having shifted into three distinctly different locations (an open-concept apartment, a spare warehouse, and a unit in a historical building that dates back to gold rush–era Vancouver) since conception and hosting several off-site projects as the art demands.
Over the last few decades, it seems the art world in Vancouver has been focused almost solely on photography, and while the gallery is aware of those lineages and cognizant of those conceptual practices that have been in development since the 1960s, WAAP is compelled to address the need to reflect artists’ way of seeing and thinking who have a different point of view from what has been established. The gallery aims to create the condition for a new Vancouver vanguard to develop their practice within the city.
The gallery has recently relocated to a new location in old Strathcona in Vancouver that it hopes will be a site for experimentation.
Note: gallery hours are subject to change, please call to verify hours before visiting
