April 12 – May 24 2025

IMMERSED • RETURN TO WATER 2025

Immersed • RETURN TO WATER 2025 marks the gallery’s fifth year of inviting visitors to programming and community activations that explore the enduring relationship we have with this watery region.

Artists working in alternative lens-based practices tell the story of the geological and ecological deep time of this watery world. Time capture imagery, interactive installations, animation, sound design, video, and 3D virtual reality immerse the viewer in sensorial encounters.

Texada – Josephine Anderson + Claire Sanford | VR Experience + Immersive Installation + Interactive Station

Time is huge, and it just keeps slipping into the future. An island rises from the ocean, and its inhabitants go about their life’s work — blasting, hauling, and shipping the rock on which they live. Framed as an immersive portrait of a tiny oceanic enclave called Texada Island, this work explores the elasticity of time, and the nature of how we spend ours.

Uninterrupted-VR – Nettie Wild + Betsy Carson + Rae Hull + Michael Brockington | VR Experience + Immersive Installation + Interactive Station

Uninterrupted-VR immerses viewers in the spectacle of migrating Pacific Salmon, an ancient cycle of renewal that has fed entire ecosystems — uninterrupted — since before recorded time. Combining art and the magic of virtual reality, Uninterrupted-VR brings a wild river right into the heart of a city, exploring the connected destiny of cities and nature everywhere.

ChronoScapes – Sarah Crawley + Community Participants | Screening + Printed Imagery + Interactive Station

Using a slow-technology process of creating photographs with a pinhole camera and exposure periods measured in days and months — from solstice to solstice — the Pinhole Camera Project saw more than one hundred cameras situated throughout the valley — in a special spot chosen by each individual taking part.

Two immersive VIRTUAL REALITY experiences — Uninterrupted-VR and Texada — are being shown throughout the run of the Immersed • RETURN TO WATER 2025 program at the Comox Valley Art Gallery.

SEATING IS LIMITED to five visitors per project experience.

To participate in an experience, REGISTER by emailing [email protected]
or
DROP-IN prior to show start times to access any un-booked seats.

Showtimes are Wednesday – Saturday:

MORNING:

• 10:30am
• 11:30am

AFTERNOON:

• 1:30pm
• 2:30pm
• 3:30pm

The VR experiences take about FORTY MINUTES. This includes being oriented, assisted into and out of the viewing gear, and the immersive experiences (Texada – seventeen minutes | Uninterrupted-VR – twenty-four minutes).