Help Duplex move into a new studio and gallery!

To our dearest community, 

We are raising funds to support the building of studios and a gallery space for Duplex at a new (fingers crossed) location on Franklin street. Sadly, we are being pushed out of our current location at 4257 Fraser street where we have been since 2015. We will hopefully be moving into our new location September 2019. We need your support! This new space is almost twice the size of Duplex (5600 sqft). We will be able to accommodate many more additional artists looking for affordable studios and a welcoming and generative community of artists in our project space.

This campaign will help us get started on building our new space: constructing walls, doing electrical work and other renovations necessary to safely and efficiently set up our new studios and gallery/project space. Duplex will be doing the labour ourselves as we have always done, but we need the support of our extended communities to help purchase some materials. These things include:

-drywall
-lumber
-paint
-lighting fixtures
-vehicle rental to transport all this material
-electrical work 
-kiln fix
-2 industrial sink installations

Donations to our campaign could come in any amount, everything and anything is very appreciated! However, here are some suggested increments for your convenience :)

$5
$10
$20
$50
$100 *donation’s from here and at higher amounts come with a special limited edition by a Duplex artist of your choice: Gabi Dao, Julia Feyrer, Liam Johnstone, Scott Kemp, Setareh Yasan and maybe more ;) *!
$200
$300

Duplex, as many of you know, is run on 100% volunteer labour of the renters/programming collective.  Duplex receives no operating funding, this is why support through this campaign is so integral to us continuing to do what we do. No one is 'staff' at Duplex, no one gets paid. We run the studios similarly to a co-op. Everyone shares responsibilities. This includes administration, promotion, building maintenance, curatorial initiatives/organizing, creative input, knowledge, skills, resources— we actively work to keep our organizing structure horizontal. Because we operate like this, we are able to keep some of the lowest studio rent in Vancouver. Our model is something that we think is integral to the ecology of the arts in this city, a space for artists run 100% by artists. Our low rent allows us to maintain a public gallery devoted to showing the work of emerging and experimental artists, spaces that are becoming scarce in this city. We can even afford small artists' honorariums for those showing in our gallery too. In our current climate of cultural economies which privileges the individual genius, we attempt to undo that by acknowledging and facilitating the need for artistic communities, dialogue, making and gathering through and at our space. We intend to continue with this organizational model and spirit in our new location. 

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Here is some additional context for those who may be unfamiliar with Duplex:

Over this summer, Duplex has been faced with an unrealistically inflated (by 216%) triple net lease on our current space with no room for negotiation or security from the landlords renovation and upgrade plans. Thus we are being forced to find a new location. This story is certainly not new, but it certainly doesn't get any less disappointing. 

We are a group of 10 interdisciplinary artists and organizers gratefully based on the unceded Coast Salish territories, including the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, what is also known as Vancouver. We are Gabi Dao, Julia Feyrer, Maya Gauvin, Frieda Raye Green, Kara Hansen, Liam Johnstone, Scott Kemp, Jordan Milner, Stephan Wright, and  Setareh Yasan. We are a registered non-profit society. We are also an artist run centre, by virtue of the artists working in the studios maintaining the space and programming of the gallery. However, we prefer to refer to ourselves as a DIY space.

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We want to give our most hear-felt thank you for your time in reading this and supporting our campaign! Duplex keeps doing what it does because we love our community! We hope the community feels the same. Please consider helping us to keep doing what we do, because what is art without a community to share it with?

For info on us, what we do and updates on this campaign please check out our website www.duplexduplex.ca or follow us on instagram @duplexduplex or facebook @projectduplex