Charlene Vickers, Hazel Meyer, and Michelle Sound among names on 2025 Sobey Awards longlist
B.C.’s Charles Campbell and Tania Willard are also nominated for the Pacific Region in competition for country’s richest visual-art award

Charles Campbell’s Actor Boy: Travels in Birdsong, 2017. View of performance and installation, Flotilla Artist Run Centre Conference, Charlottetown. ©Charles Campbell. Photo by Oakar Myint

Charlene Vickers’s Big Blue Smudge, 2021. Installation view, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. ©Charlene Vickers. Photo by Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery
VANCOUVER ARTISTS Charlene Vickers, Hazel Meyer, and Michelle Sound are among the 30 artists longlisted for the national 2025 Sobey Art Award.
The Canadian contemporary visual arts award nominees are part of the Pacific Region contingent announced this week by the National Gallery of Canada and the Sobey Art Foundation. The Sobey Art Award is the richest award in the country, carrying a total of $465,000 in prize money. (Five artists in each of six regions across Canada are nominated.)
Anishinaabe-Ojibwa artist Vickers works in a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, performance, and installation. She graduated from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and from SFU in critical studies of the arts, where she later received an MFA.
Meyer’s practice encompasses installation, performance, and text, exploring the links between sexuality, feminism, and material culture, and often drawing on archival research. Last year at the Richmond Art Gallery, her exhibit The Marble in the Basement examined the legacy of iconic Canadian artist and experimental filmmaker Joyce Wieland, focusing on a pile of marble scraps discovered in Wieland’s home after her death.
Sound is a Cree and Métis artist, educator, and mother who is a member of Wapsewsipi Swan River First Nation in Northern Alberta. The interdisciplinary artist holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from SFU and a master’s degree in applied arts from Emily Carr University Art + Design. She currently has work in the Capture Photography Festival show Stitched, where she integrates traditional textile practices and beading with photography.

Tania Willard’s Surrounded/Surrounding with Woodpile Score, 2018. Installation view, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC. © Tania Willard. Photo by Rachel Topham

Michelle Sound’s Mother Land, 2024, at Stitched as part of the Capture Photography Festival now on view at the Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art. Photo courtesy of the artist and Ceremonial/Art
Other Pacific nominees include Tania Willard, a mixed Secwépemc and settler artist whose research intersects with land-based art, including collaborative projects such as BUSH Gallery and language revitalization work in Secwépemc communities. Her artistic and curatorial projects have included Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2012, and Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2021–2022.
Joining them on the list is Victoria’s Charles Campbell, the Jamaican-born multidisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose sculptures, paintings, and sonic installations have been shown locally at 2021’s expansive Vancouver Special show at the Vancouver Art Gallery and at Surrey Art Gallery, in 2023’s Charles Campbell: An Ocean to Livity. Campbell is the recipient of the 2022 VIVA Award and the 2020 City of Victoria Creative Builder Award.
You can find the full cross-country longlist here.
Six shortlisted artists will be unveiled on June 3 and featured in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada running from October 3, 2025, to February 8, 2026.
Janet Smith is cofounder and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.
Related Articles
Julie Rubio’s extensive new documentary, making its local debut at the VIFF Centre, reveals a trailblazing woman who was an outsider on several counts
Kaleidoscopic projection reveals natural elements, from the grand vistas of the Coast Mountains to close-up images of roadside plants
Famous works like Wild and Fountain create conversations about museum collections and the land they sit on
Centred around portals, this year’s just-announced lineup includes several visual-art exhibitions, Vancouver International Jazz Festival concerts, and more
Event inspired by the current exhibition A Tangled Thicket features hands-on art activities and a theatrical performance
At Richmond Museum event, visitors can explore over 50 partner sites, ranging from Seawrack Press Studio to LuLu Island Winery
With this gritty collection of street photographs, the Vancouver songwriter, poet, and playwright opens a new chapter in his hard-won life as an artist
As part of Asian Heritage Month, the gallery’s first performers-in-residence use old-school radios and headlamps in a new piece that fuses dance, multimedia, and theatre
A home tour of five West Vancouver residences, a film screening of Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between The Lines, and much more on offer
In Capture Photography Festival presentation, moving-image installation shows a bird’s-eye view of Klamath River restoration
Highly anticipated event features a festive atmosphere and performances in celebration of Asian Heritage Month
Marking its 25th anniversary, the inclusive two-day festival sets up in fields and by riverbanks, along with more conventional spaces
Graduating artists Wol-Un, Eden Eisses, Asad Aftab, and Claudia Goulet-Blais share insights on the works they’ll have on display
In partnership with Burnaby School District 41, exhibitions showcase artworks by elementary and high-school students
New video work traverses an interior landscape shaped by the perspectives of artists Min Kim and Mia Wennerstrand
North Van Arts exhibition features contemporary works by Daryl Lynne Wood, Lilian Broca, and Maria Abagis
In largest edition to date, exhibition features more than 420 works from across five degree programs
Works by internationally acclaimed mosaic artists Daryl Wood, Lilian Broca, and Maria Abagis to be displayed at CityScape Community ArtSpace
Series explores Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s practice through films, workshops, and lectures with queer Black and African artists and cultural producers
B.C.’s Charles Campbell and Tania Willard are also nominated for the Pacific Region in competition for country’s richest visual-art award
Z·inc Artist Collective brings deep curiosity and personal experience to meditations on networks that sustain and adapt
Funds raised from flash tattoos go directly to the Artist Survival & Healing Fund, which specifically benefits land-back and cultural-care workers
Relocation is temporary while the District of West Vancouver moves forward on plans for a larger purpose-built arts and culture facility
On May 10 and 11, more than 100 artists will showcase everything from stained glass to photography across 31 different locations
Working with local doctors and BC Parks Foundation, facility opens Emily Carr: Navigating an Impenetrable Landscape exhibition to those needing to improve their health and well-being
At the Vancouver Art Gallery, Jean Paul Riopelle retrospective covers five decades of his work, from 1942 to 1992
Opening night of the multi-artist exhibition features karaoke, storytelling, and music
New Capture Photography Festival exhibition at the Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art moves the form through beadwork, weaving, handstitching, and more
Paintings and handcrafted installations by four Surrey artists revolve around the intersection of nature and humanity
The filmmaker responds to colonial and industrial pressures with handcrafted practices that call out to her Inuit heritage