Current Exhibition
“Make Space” with RVA Fatties
This June, we are showcasing the work of fat artists and creators here in Richmond and the surrounding areas. The goal is to highlight the depth and variety of work being made within this community, and to offer visibility and celebration to the artists themselves.
The show centers fat artists and creators in Richmond and nearby areas.
It’s not about fatness as a subject, but about showing up, making space, and being seen.
Variety and authenticity: a mix of styles, tones, and mediums that feel representative of RVA’s creative energy. Variety of medium: photography, fiber, digital, painting, etc.
Upcoming Exhibition
“Field Riffs” work by Evan Patterson and Nicholas Crider
Opening Reception First Friday, July 3rd 5PM - 11PM
“Field Riffs,” brings together the work artists Evan Patterson and Nicholas Crider, two artists shaped by DIY culture and the restless instinct to create. Based in Louisville, Kentucky artist Evan Patterson is primarily known for his creative work as a singer, songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist in the bands Young Widows and Jaye Jayle. Crider is most known for his work in film and as a member of the Richmond, Virginia based band, Dumb Waiter.
Through working across different mediums and histories, both artists take an approach to art as an act of transformation. Salvaging parts of memory, humor, decay, and personal mythology into forms that feel both familiar and slightly unsteady.
Crider’s interdisciplinary practice moves through sculpture, film, and printmaking. For Crider, constructing environments that balance the sentimental with alienation comes intuitively. His work often uses exaggerated gestures and absurdity to expose the emotional weight of ordinary experiences. Nostalgia in Crider’s work is never clean or comforting, it arrives awkward and unstable, carrying traces of humor alongside unease.
For Patterson, visual art predates his esteemed music career. Long before becoming known for his work in Young Widows and Jaye Jayle, drawing served as his first language. His practice retains the immediacy of the sketchbook and hands on labor, moving between drawing, printmaking and sculpture. The works presented from his first solo show, SONGS WITHOUT WORDS OR SOUND, reflect this expansive approach. Large scale exterior sculptures, screen prints, and pen and ink drawings pulled directly from years of accumulated sketchbook pages. Across these works, Patterson treats repetition, texture and material as forms of rhythm and composition, creating visual works that echo the structures of his music.
Together, the exhibition exists in a space where music, image and object bleed into one another. The works carry the residue of handmade processes, failed systems, personal archives and lived environments. What emerges is a shared language rooted in the persistent act of making, of turning discarded thoughts, marks, sounds and materials into something that continues to speak.
Calls for Entries
Past Exhibitions
For over 20 years, Gallery5 has been host to work from hundreds of artists, from established, internationally recognized creators, to burgeoning talent.
Our mission is to make art accessible to the community, and to make opportunities to show work accessible to artists.
Every month Gallery5 hosts a new show, opening in conjunction with Richmond Arts District’s First Fridays art walk. Our shows feature local and regional talent, and our commitment to working with a variety of artists means that the work is diverse, and ranges from printmaking, to photography, to sculpture, to sequential art (and more), sometimes all in the same show.
Special thanks to our Arts for All supporters!
