EXHIBITION
February 28 - March 25, 2026
OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, March 5, 2026, 6–9pm
We’re pleased to invite you to Between Memory and Light, a two-person exhibition featuring work by Rachel Nixon and Lorna Carmichael, on view at Gallery 881 from February 28 to March 25, 2026. The exhibition brings together photography and film rooted in family archives, memory, and intergenerational connection. Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, March 5, 2026, from 6–9pm. Gallery 881 is a free and accessible third space — all are welcome!
EXHIBITION STATEMENTS
Rachel Nixon
The Garden of Maggie Victoria explores memory, personal heritage and female representation through the story of my great-grandmother, forgotten within my family after her early death in 1943.
I first learned about Maggie Victoria in 2022 as I scoured our family archives. Her face emerged from photos mostly captured by her husband — my great-grandfather Frank — a businessman and keen amateur photographer in Lancashire, northern England, where I was born. Now living in Vancouver, I wanted to restore my great-grandmother’s legacy and share a dialogue with her across decades and continents. I thus combined those archival images, letters and other found materials with my own, contemporary nature-oriented photographs made thousands of miles from where my great-grandmother had lived and ultimately died.
Following a fast-moving illness, Maggie Victoria took her last breath during wartime, aged only 56. As was often the way, Frank quickly re-married, and no one mentioned her after that — not even her children. Maggie Victoria’s story was inadvertently erased for decades, but through the archives, I got to know her as a mother, wife, proud gardener, devoted friend, radio aficionado, stubborn patient — and more. I like to think we would have got on, in spite of the generational and geographic gap.
Many of Frank’s photos show her in domestic settings. This series blends scans of those analogue images with my digital photographs tracking the changing seasons. Through these collages, my goal is to render Maggie Victoria visible and present, and question the male gaze cementing her role.
A handful of letters were written close to her death. They give a hard-to-read insight into the last weeks of a woman dedicated to her family and determined to put on a brave face. Around her, everyone is doing their best. Pieces of those letters are integrated into the collages.
In discussing this archive-born project, strangers have shared with me their own familial tale of loss, mystery or secrecy. Anchored in a personal meditation, the series invites us to consider issues of heritage, grief and the passing of time that affect us all.
Lorna Carmichael
DEAR ELIZABETH, 6.5 minutes
Film Synopsis:
A box of handwritten letters takes us on a journey through a young man’s national service, as he courts his wife to be. Years later, over the pandemic lockdown, his children re-read their late Father’s letters, to their Mum, Elizabeth, providing a much needed connection, while she is in isolation during her final days.
'Dear Elizabeth' is a personal film, that became both a cathartic way to deal with the finality of losing both parents, and also a joyful way to connect with the past.
Elizabeth Carmichael was my Mum. She was in a care home in Scotland when the pandemic began. As she was in isolation, our only way of communicating in ‘person' was via FaceTime. My siblings and I had rediscovered a box of 55 love letters from my Dad, (when he began courting her in 1955), and we began to read them, one by one, to my Mum. The letters begin when he was on his National Service, in both Malta and Cyprus, and his handwritten letters weave a tale of both squadron life, and a yearning to be with his sweetheart in Scotland. My parent's love story brought us all joy, laughter and tears, and provided a much needed connection to navigate the emotionally challenging time, and the separation that came with it.
Making the film took some time as I was dealing with my grief, and it wasn’t always easy to create my version of their love story. However I also relished the journey it took me on, weaving together old family photographs and super 8 memories, and pouring through archival footage to find film to bring their story to life.
ARTIST BIOS
Rachel Nixon is a British-Canadian fine art photographer and former journalist based in Vancouver.
Drawing on her experience living and working across continents and cultures, her photographic work explores themes of personal heritage, womanhood, grief, and memory.
She has received accolades including four Julia Margaret Cameron Awards for female artists, and in 2025 was a finalist for the esteemed Sony Alpha Female Award. Her work has been widely exhibited internationally, at venues such as the Head On Photo Festival in Australia and the Royal Photographic Society in the UK.
After graduating with honours from the VanArts professional photography program in 2019, Rachel committed herself full-time to her fine art practice. Before this, she had an extensive 20-year career as a journalist and news executive, developing and managing digital news services for organizations including the BBC and CBC.
Rachel also brings her editorial and photographic expertise to her volunteer role as Editor of WE ARE Magazine. This twice-yearly publication of the RPS Women in Photography group showcases the work and stories of female photographers around the world.
She holds a first-class honours degree in Modern Languages and Literature from the University of Oxford. Her unique international perspective deeply informs the questions of identity, place and belonging, and the connections we share despite our polarized times.
Lorna Carmichael’s wanderlust as a child was fueled by whimsical family adventures with her Dad.
Daydreaming of sparkling oceans, Lorna left Scotland, after studying architecture at Glasgow School of Art, to explore sunnier lands. Always travelling with a camera, happenstance threw her into the world of visual storytelling. A sucker for Romeo and Juliet, she was thrilled to work on Baz Luhrmann's epic 'Australia' as her inaugural feature film. Combining her love for adventure and film, she camped under the stars in the Australian outback, and then back in the film studios she was thrown into Visual Effects, where she worked alongside great directors and cinematographers creating magic on the film set. Lorna's film resume includes Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, J Edgar Hoover and The Night Manager.
Four continents, and many serendipitous journeys later, Lorna is a photographer and filmmaker based in Vancouver, Canada. Drawing on her cinematic background, her work is inspired by a love of nature, a passion for people, and the magic she finds in everyday life. Using portraiture as the foundation for storytelling, she crafts narratives that explore longing, connection, and the emotional lives of her subjects.
SPONSOR
Gallery 881 is proudly sponsored by our in-house PrintMaker Studio, a Canson Infinity Certified Print Lab and custom picture framer dedicated to museum-quality production. When you print or frame with our sponsor, you help sustain Gallery 881’s free exhibitions, free artist talks, free and low-entry programming, and the charitable initiatives that keep our space accessible to artists and the wider community.