Neighbourhood Posters: An artist project by Cathy Busby, Vancouver 2025–26

Artist: Cathy Busby  
Editors: Yasmine Whaley-Kalaora, Charlie Mahoney-Volk, Faye Fayerman
Designer: Charlie Mahoney-Volk
Publisher: ECU Press 
Printed by: Hemlock Printers Ltd, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada 
Binding: Paperback  
Dimensions: 28 x 21.5 x 1.6 cm
Page count: 272 pages 
Language: English
ISBN: 978 1 989490 03 7
Price: 100 CAD
Printed in an edition of 100
Release date: May 17, 2025

Neighbourhood Posters: An artist project by Cathy Busby, Vancouver 2025–26 documents Vancouver’s vibrant, non-commercial neighborhood poster scene from 2025 to 2026: a site of ever-changing, colourful, unregulated information flow, announcing art and music events, parties, rallies, calls to action, and political messages. The posters cover utility poles, electrical boxes, bus shelters, and empty storefronts; a consistent presence in this urban landscape. They are often marred by the weather or defaced and transformed with the addition of scrape marks and scribbles. Collecting this analogue activity, which inherently protests late-capitalism’s push for digital communication, allows for an offline and inter-generational flow of information to be recorded, creating an archive of cultural action that otherwise wouldn’t survive. Collectively, this poster activity is a testament to a diverse, persistent, and lively Vancouver.  

Cathy Busby has been making conceptually-based and politically-minded installations, wall-text paintings, performances, and artist books for over four decades. She has long been intervening in the conventions of pain and care in personal, institutional, and medical settings. Her work amplifies subject matter and voices through recontextualization and scale, often creating collections such as public apologies, self-help books, and vehicle names. She graduated from NSCAD (BFA 1984), going on to direct the College’s Anna Leonowens Gallery, and later earning an MA in Media Studies and a PhD in Communication (Concordia, 1999). Her bold and witty work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in New York, Beijing, Melbourne, and Berlin. In 2025, she launched I WONDER: Art + Care + Dementia, published by Art Metropole, Toronto. She is grateful to live on the unceded territories known as Vancouver.