Gallery Gachet Rising: A New Chapter

Gallery Gachet is a member-run society operating in the Downtown Eastside, by and for artists living with a mental illness. For 21 years, over half its annual budget was financed by Vancouver Coastal Health, acknowledging its value to the community and the people who run it, as a part of a continuum of mental health supports. In 2016 that funding ceased, with just a few months notice from VCH, plunging our organization into crisis.

Today, after almost two years of hard work, sacrifice, and wide-ranging support from our many intersecting communities, Gachet is entering a new era. Indeed, our reality has changed. We are moving to a new home at 9 West Hastings, the ground floor of the Beacon Hotel beside Pigeon Park. We are strengthening our partnership with WePress society, sharing space and an open studio at this location.

We will continue to program exhibitions of contemporary, community, and outsider art, offer workshops, and be a peer-run space that provides a creative alternative to mainstream clinical and pathologizing approaches to psychological difference and distress. We hold firm to our belief that working for social justice is integral to our collective artistic work, and that access to art is a human right. Gallery Gachet is our ongoing collective work, and our work continues.

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Goodbye Party

Goodbye 88 East Cordova, Hello 9 West Hastings!
October 23rd, 4-8pm [at 88 East Cordova Street]

As Gallery Gachet prepares to move two blocks west we are taking one last moment at 88 East Cordova Street, to gather and share memories with our neighbours, artists and friends.

Everyone is invited to reminisce about times past and help us dream about Gallery Gachet’s new home.

Our new partners, WePress, will be in attendance to facilitate art making. Of course, there will be food and music!