THIS Gallery

Ongoing social and curatorial project, 2020–present

THIS Gallery is a functioning contemporary art gallery and an ongoing experiment in how art is exhibited, valued, exchanged and encountered. Founded by Shannon Pawliw in 2020, the gallery has increasingly become an extension of her artistic practice, using the structures and conventions of the art world as material for questioning access, value, participation and exchange.

THIS began during the pandemic as an online curatorial project created to provide artists with opportunities to exhibit and connect with audiences at a time when many conventional spaces were inaccessible. It later became a physical gallery in Vancouver, operating within a commercial model while continually experimenting with what that model can contain.

The gallery’s programming includes exhibitions alongside participatory projects, critique groups, workshops, social gatherings and other artist-led initiatives. These activities position the gallery not simply as a place where finished artworks are displayed, but as a space where artists and audiences meet, ideas are tested, and different forms of exchange can occur.

Questions of monetary value have become increasingly central to Pawliw’s own work within the gallery. In 2026, she began offering her artwork through THIS on a Pay What You Can basis. Rather than assigning a single fixed price, Pawliw allows the buyer to determine what they are willing to pay. Pricing for work by other artists remains determined independently and is not part of this experiment.

For Pawliw, Pay What You Can extends questions that recur throughout her broader practice: Who determines what art is worth? How is creative labour valued? What role does access play in collecting art? What happens when the conventions surrounding art are treated as changeable rather than inevitable? By relinquishing some control over the final price, the transaction itself becomes a site where value is negotiated rather than assumed.

THIS was not founded as an artwork, and its practical responsibilities remain real. It sells artwork, supports exhibiting artists, organizes exhibitions and operates within the economic realities of a small independent gallery. Over time, however, the act of operating the gallery has become increasingly entangled with Pawliw’s studio practice.

Rather than proposing an alternative art system from outside the existing one, THIS works from within it. The gallery becomes a place where its conventions can be used, altered and tested, and where the systems surrounding art become part of the material.