Walter Phillips Gallery

10/14/2026

We are welcoming applications for the upcoming thematic residency, ‘Embodied Making: Performance Art, Images and Objects’ taking place from July 5 to August 6, 2027.

This program invites visual artists to think expansively about performance, and how performance emerges through movement, stillness, reading, listening, endurance, care and collective action. Further, it invites artists to investigate the ways that performance and materiality intersect, considering how images and forms are activated, transformed, and given meaning through embodied interaction.

Through individual studio-based experimentation and collective inquiry, artists will explore and create new relationships between bodies, objects, and spaces. Banff’s extraordinary landscape and natural surroundings inevitably become collaborators in the creative process, offering opportunities for site-responsive and place-based investigations.

Participants will join faculty mentors Brendan Fernandes: artist, Claire Fleming Staples: artist, and Abril Zales: curator.

The application deadline is February 17, 2027, follow the link for more information and to apply.
https://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/visual-arts/visual-arts-embodied-making-performance-art-images-and-objects

Photo: Brendan Fernandes, ‘Contract and Release,’ 2019. © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / ARS

10/13/2026

Applications have opened for the visual arts residency program ‘Sounding Like a Mountain.’

This residency invites visual artists to apply with projects that consider how places sing, how memory persists in vibration and how listening to the land can re-orient ethical and political relations.

Drawing on concepts inherent to acoustic ecology and taking the mountains of Banff as inspiration, participants are invited to explore how sound activates multiple temporalities – shaped by land use, migration, ecological disruption, colonial infrastructures, and so on. The Earth can be thought of as a field of relations in which biological, geological and social processes co-create one another. Participants will reflect on ecological and ethical listening and sounding as it informs thinking, art-making and presentation.

‘Sounding Like a Mountain,’ with faculty Xenia Benivolski: curator and art writer, Elina Waage Mikalsen: artist, and Kathryn Yusoff: geographer, will take place from May 16 to June 19, 2027.

The application deadline is November 18, 2026, follow the link below for more information and to apply.
https://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/visual-arts/visual-arts-sounding-mountain

Photo: Elina Waage Mikalsen, ‘I Lay My Ear Against the Weave’s Ear,’ 2024. Photo by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

10/06/2026

In celebration of Walter Phillips Gallery’s 50th anniversary, the exhibition ‘One arc in colour, another in time’ invites artists and curators we have worked with over the years to share a memory via postcard. As the project unfolds, we will be posting some of the responses here.

Thank you, Richard Hill, for sharing this with us.

‘One arc in colour, another in time’ is on view in the lobby of the Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building until January 3, 2027.

10/05/2026

Join us on October 10 from 10am to 12pm for the next edition of Family ARTventures—our monthly, drop-in artmaking series inviting children, youth, and families to create together. This event is free and open to all, with materials provided.

This month, we draw inspiration from the recently published book, ‘What is a Sculpture?,’ written by artist Diane Borsato and illustrated by Laura Carlin. Together we will transform everyday objects and recycled materials into sculptural worlds and characters. Please feel welcome to bring a favourite object, no bigger than the size of your palm, to create a sculptural environment around it.

The Family ARTventures Program is generously supported by TD Ready Commitment.

Diane Borsato's exhibition, ‘A Clean Place to Swim’ is on view at Walter Phillips Gallery through December 13.

Photo: Courtesy the artist and Tundra Books

09/30/2026

Please note that the gallery will be closed today, September 30th, in observance of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Regular hours will resume Thursday, October 1st. Visit us tomorrow to view our current exhibition at Walter Phillips Gallery, ‘Diane Borsato: A Clean Place to Swim.’

09/29/2026

Please join us on Thursday, October 1st for Open Studios for the participants in the Indigenous Arts Hide Tanning Residency. Over three weeks, Indigenous artists have worked alongside faculty and peers, developing their knowledge of traditional hide tanning through hands-on practice, cultural learning, workshops, and conversation.

Open Studios will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. in Glyde Hall. All are welcome to drop in, explore works in progress, and engage with artists as they share their practices and processes.

Photo: Joely BigEagle Kequahtooway, Banff Artist in Residence Open Studios 2021. Photo by Rita Taylor.

09/18/2026

‘Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts’ is the origin of the work, Land Poem (after ‘Soundings’) that was co-written by the exhibition’s curators, Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson for the iteration of the touring exhibition in its presentation at Walter Phillips Gallery in 2021.

At the core of the exhibition was the question, How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization? At Walter Phillips Gallery, the poem was displayed on an outdoor banner that was installed in the archway outside the building in which it is located. In its audio form, recorded in 2025 with celebrated multidisciplinary artist and singer/songwriter Cheryl L’Hirondelle, the poem has a new relationship to the building it references as audible within its entrance.

The travelling exhibition, ‘Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts’ was organized by Independent Curators International (ICI). Land Poem (after ‘Soundings’) is presented in the vestibule of Glyde Hall as a part of the long-term exhibition, ‘Listening Devices’ taking place outside of Walter Phillips Gallery.

Follow the link in bio to learn more.

Photo: ‘Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts’, installation view, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, 2021. Courtesy of Walter Phillips Gallery and ICI. Photo: Rita Taylor. ‘Soundings’ is curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson and the tour is organized by Independent Curators International (ICI).

Learn more at https://curatorsintl.org/

09/16/2026

Work with us!

We are seeking a Manager, Exhibitions and Collections to join the team at Walter Phillips Gallery.

For more information, please follow the link below:

View job details and apply now

09/15/2026

Walter Phillips Gallery had the privilege of presenting the exhibition, 'SHARON LOCKHART' in 2025 and that closed earlier this year. In this video, the artist speaks to her relationship to Fogo Island, where Lockhart’s film installation, 'WINDWARD' and photographs, 'Fogo Island Portrait Studio', were developed over multiple summers.

For those in Toronto, The Power Plant, in partnership with The Vega Foundation, is proud to present the exhibition 'Fogo', opening this fall and on view from October 24 through March 21, 2027.

'WINDWARD' is co-commissioned and co-produced by Shorefast/Fogo Island Arts, The Vega Foundation, and the National Gallery of Canada, with the support of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

09/14/2026

In the exhibition ‘One arc in colour, another in time’ we have been reflecting on our history in celebration of the gallery’s fiftieth anniversary in August.

In 1976, under the leadership of Canadian visual artist Takao Tanabe, Banff Centre opened Walter Phillips Gallery. Takao Tanabe served as the head of Banff Centre's painting department and left a profound impact at Banff Centre. Several of the memories that have been shared with us via postcards name him, including this recollection from Harry Stooshinoff.

'One arc in colour, another in time' is on view on the main floor of the Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building through January 3, 2027.