New Centre Dedicated to All the Island’s Arts
Hornby Island Arts Centre, Hornby Island, BC
Word has it that Hornby Island, located 170 kilometres northwest of Vancouver, BC, has more practising artists per capita than most Canadian communities of its size. To meet their needs, the Hornby Island Arts Council (HIAC) was formed in 1998, taking up residence in a 40-foot ATCO portable. For the past 20 years, the council has worked to raise funds for a purpose-built home—a dream that was realized this summer with the completion of the Hornby Island Arts Centre.
Designed by D’Arcy Jones Architects, the award-winning arts centre is a 31,000-square foot multi-purpose art, music, film and dance space, with movable walls and a sprung dance floor. On June 21, the centre opened with Opening Doors, an open-call visual art exhibition of island artists. This was followed July 8 to Sep 15 by a more focused exhibition, Archeology of Place: Geoffrey Road Show—the road here featuring a particularly rich vein of permanent and part-time resident artists.
Preview spoke with artist and executive director of HIAC Melissa Moore, who previously served as course director at London College of Fashion, on her initial impressions of island life. “I’ve been coming to Hornby for decades, so I arrived with a fairly well-formed sense of the island. Living and working here has meant letting go of my ‘enchanted’ view to some extent. The day-to-day reality is more complex and layered but rewarding.
“Part of this deeper understanding has come from projects that pull together many perspectives— and facing my own role as a settler and listening more carefully to the island’s deeper history, as well as being a lot busier than I planned to be due to all the potential the new arts centre holds.”
