Mel Gausden | Future Museums II

MEL GAUSDEN | FUTURE MUSEUMS II
UPPER GALLERY
OCTOBER 4-16, 2025
Opening Reception: Sat. October 4, 2-4 pm l Artist in Attendance
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver


Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents Future Museums II, the new solo exhibition from Ontario-based artist Mel Gausden. In Future Museums II, Gausden builds upon the themes and imagery of her 2024 exhibition Future Museums which was shown at Bau-Xi Toronto.

In this poignant new collection, the artist revisits beloved locations on the west coast of British Columbia, using joyful colours and familiar forest shapes and silhouettes to reflect an intimate communion with nature. These combined elements evoke a time when the living landscape thrived, less burdened by the threats it faces today. Gausden expresses a bittersweet affection and deep respect for the landscapes - either still living or now gone - that she knows and loves, as well as an urgent plea for increased awareness of the natural world around us and the desperate need for human practices to change.

We are thrilled to welcome the artist who will be in attendance at her opening reception in Vancouver.


Artist Statement:

Future Museums is a series of landscape paintings that honours the forests and lakes that have shaped my life; many of which have already been lost or altered by wildfires, invasive species, and urban development.

Each work places the viewer inside the forest, immersed and surrounded. By eliminating the distant vantage point, I want to remind us that we are no longer separate from the effects of climate change. Painted in the soft light of dawn or dusk, these scenes ask a quiet but urgent question: are we witnessing an ending, or the beginning of change?

The title Future Museums imagines a time when the wild places I paint - forests, lakes,
ecosystems once teeming with life - may no longer exist outside of memory or archive. It
suggests a future where nature itself becomes a museum piece: preserved in images, but lost in reality. My work stands as both a tribute and a warning, a way of remembering what we still have, and what we risk losing.

Drawing from memory, emotion, photographs, and daydreams, I create composite landscapes that are both deeply personal and collectively resonant. My process begins with watercolour studies and evolves through layers of abstraction, intuition, and experimentation. 

This series is a gesture of reverence, a way of saying: they were here. They were beautiful. And they mattered.

– Mel Gausden 2025


VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION