Rio Theatre owner delivers new gallery to Vancouver arts scene

A new cultural venue is set to join the Vancouver arts landscape.

After almost two decades of running the Rio Theatre, owner Corinne Lea is opening the Rio Grindhouse, a contemporary art gallery and eventual cafe/bar space, next door to the theatre on East Broadway.

Lea said she has been “keeping an eye” on her neighbours for years, waiting for a space to become available. A space opened up just over a year ago, and Lea made her move.

“As soon as I saw this space was available, I jumped on it, and then, thankfully, for the first time in my life, I was happy that the city took a long time to give me a building permit because we were so busy doing The Park,” said Lea, who took over running the refurbished Park Theatre in October 2025.

The Rio Grindhouse Gallery officially opens on Oct. 17 with the Graeme Berglund-curated and Tyshaya Smith-produced show Scenes That Steal Themselves, an exhibition of work from 25-plus Vancouver artists that “examines the erosion of Vancouver’s cultural infrastructure and the spaces that have shaped the city’s creative identity.”

“It’s intentional irony,” Berglund said when asked about a new gallery opening with a show focusing on the loss of art spaces. “It’s all about all the cultural institutions that we’ve lost in the last 30 years.”

Berglund, an artist and a longtime advocate for the arts in Vancouver, says the city has lost 350 dedicated cultural spaces over the past 30 years.

“I’ve asked all of the artists to basically focus on a place that was meaningful to them from their past and do a dedicated work to that piece with it no longer being in existence,” she said.

The group show, which will run until Nov. 15, includes work from Maya Fuhr, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Michael Turner and Paul Wong, who this month was announced as Canada’s first Parliamentary Visual Artist Laureate, alongside younger lesser-known artists.

“I’ve always been trying to kind of knock down the lines of division between different communities in Vancouver in the arts,” said Berglund, who has run galleries in the past. “We’re really trying to have deeply established artists showing alongside emerging artists in order to support and lift that talent.”

The show is multi-dimensional in scope with paintings, photographs, journalism as contemporary art, installations and performance pieces all under one roof — something Berglund says really fits the Rio’s indie brand.

“You’ve got this audience that’s going to be next door (at the theatre) that’s going to come in and might not know what to expect, which I think is a really fun thing, especially with such a multi-person or multi-artist show to open it up,” said Berglund. “I think it’s going to be a real cabinet of curiosities to a certain extent … We need new models like this in the city in order to help the local art proliferate.”