Governor G e n e r a ls Awards in Visual and Media Arts

2011
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Message from the Governor General of Canada

The language of art speaks to us across the ages, asking questions, telling truths and renewing our sense of the human condition. From the ancient Dorset carvers of the Far North to the multimedia visionaries of the 21st century, the artists of this land have been reflecting and inspiring our lives for centuries. Through works of wonderful richness and imagination, the recipients of the 2011 Governor Generals Awards in Visual and Media Arts have deepened our understanding of ourselves and of the times in which we live. They are among Canadas most creative and talented artists, their influence transcending our borders to enrich the world at large. Let us take this opportunity to devote our time and attention to the work of Canadas visual and media artists, and to celebrate the brilliance in our midst. David Johnston
Recipients of the 2011 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. From left to right, Nancy Tousley, Robert Fones, Kye-Yeon Son, David Rimmer, Barbara Sternberg, Genevive Cadieux, Michael Morris, and Shirley Wiitasalo.

governor general's message canada council for the arts' message 2011 winners & Awards overview genevive cadieux robert fones Michael morris

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david rimmer barbara sternberg shirley wiitasalo kye-yeon son nancy tousley arts index

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Message from the Canada Council for the Arts

Canadas great artists and those who facilitate their achievements enrich and transform our daily lives, beckoning us to fresh adventures of the mind and spirit. The excellence of their work brings credit to our country, and it is fitting that these contributions be recognized with a Governor Generals Award in Visual and Media Arts. Explorers of the human spirit and its social and cultural expression, of the mysterious interface between eye and mind, our visual and media artists bring to the shores of consciousness meanings that we have never quite recognized or been able to express. We congratulate and thank the eight laureates of the 2011 Awards for their insight and breadth of vision. They have been central to the flourishing of the arts in Canada over the past several decades. We also thank Their Excellencies and acknowledge the important roles played by The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation, the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Civilization in the establishment and presentation of these awards. Joseph L. Rotman, Chair Robert Sirman, Director and CEO

Governor Generals Awards in Visual and Media Arts

The Awards, funded and administered by the Canada Council for the Arts are in their 12th year and recognize distinguished career achievements in the visual and media arts by Canadian artists, as well as outstanding contributions through voluntarism, philanthropy, board governance, community outreach or professional activities. The Canada Council Art Bank has in its collection, many works of art by these award-winning artists; works that are always available for rent or for loan. The Saidye Bronfman Award recognizes excellence in fine crafts, and is funded from the proceeds of a $1.5 million endowment given to the Canada Council by The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation in 2006. The support of the Foundation to the Canadian Museum of Civilization has also helped the Museum acquire works by recipients of the Saidye Bronfman Award. Peer committees This years independent peer assessment committee for the Awards consisted of filmmaker Michael Hoolboom (Toronto), visual artists Brian Jungen (Vancouver) and Carol Wainio (Ottawa), architect Neil Minuk (Winnipeg) and arts administrators Yolande Racine (Montreal) and Bernard Riordon (Fredericton). The peer assessment committee members for the Saidye Bronfman Award were artists Beth Alber (Toronto), Jack Sures (Regina) and Jim Thomson (East Aldfield, QC). Canada Council for the Arts The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957. The role of the Council is to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts. To fulfill this mandate, the Council offers a broad range of grants and services to professional Canadian artists and arts organizations in dance, integrated arts, media arts, music, theatre, visual arts, and writing and publishing. It also promotes public awareness of the arts through its communications, research and arts promotion activities.
Group photo and individual photos of award winners credited to Martin Lipman.

Canada Council for the Arts

2011 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts

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Genevive Cadieuxs art explores the metamorphosis of photographic and cinematic images through the recording and production process. Whether shown in a museum, private or public space, the presentation of her artwork inspires a theatrical, cinematic scene designed to affect its viewers by drawing us in. Cadieux has participated in numerous international exhibitions and at major art biennales Montreal, So Paolo, Sydney and Venice, where she represented Canada. Her work has been in several individual

Leviathan #1, 2008, colour photo on aluminum, 117 x 174 cm. Courtesy of the artist. (photo: Robert Fones)

Digital Psyche, 2007, 12 min., video

Robert Fones began his 40 year career in London, Ontario, where he was a founding member of Forest City Gallery. Fones often combines elements from popular culture and design such as packaging, pictograms and letterforms with investigations into geological, cultural, and industrial history. He has explored these ideas through artist books, published by Coach House Press and Art Metropole, sculptural letterforms with applied photographic imagery and paintings that hover between geometric abstraction and trompe loeil. Fones

has exhibited in Canada, the United States and Germany including a solo show at The Power Plant (1989) and a solo travelling exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario (1991-92). In 1991, he received the Toronto Arts Award for Visual Art. He has taught at the Ontario College of Art and Design, the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto and currently in the Art & Art History program at Sheridan College. He lives in Toronto.

David Rimmers magical experimental films demonstrate his mastery of the medium. As one of the finest technicians of Canadas avant-garde film movement, Rimmer began his practice in Vancouvers artist-run Intermedia Co-op in the late 1960s. By patiently scratching, looping, colouring, rear projecting and re-filming surplus film provided by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the National Film Board of Canada, Rimmer produced his signature works, such as Surfacing on the Thames (1970) and Variations on a Cellophane Wrapper (1970). With over 40 films in his portfolio, from animation to documentary, Rimmer remains one of the most respected film artists in Canada. His work has been

screened in many prestigious venues such as the Canadian Cultural Centre (Paris), Canada House (London), and the European Media Arts Festival (Osnnabruck, Germany) and is in many national and international collections, including The Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the British Film Institute and Pittsburghs Carnegie Institute. He has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Simon Fraser University and University of British Columbia, and gives animation workshops for residents of Vancouvers Downtown Eastside. Rimmer lives and works in Vancouver.

David Rimmer

Genevive Cadieux Robert Fones

Canada Council for the Arts

La blessure dune cicatrice ou Les anges, 1987, diptych; gouache, colour enlargement, paint and plexiglas, 297.3 x 292.7 cm (together). Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Colour research, 1972, painted wood, canoe, video, installation. Collection: Morris/Trasov Archive. (photo: Courtesy of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery)

exhibitions, including at the Muse dart contemporain de Montral (1993), the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver (1999), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton and the Art Gallery of Hamilton (2000). She received a bachelor of fine arts from the University of Ottawa, and is now an Associate Professor in the Studio Arts Department of the Fine Arts Faculty at Concordia University in Montreal, where she currently lives.

In 1969, Michael Morris co-founded Image Bank, a national vehicle for facilitating the exchange of ideas, images and information between artists by mail. Image Bank, and the mail-art exhibitions and publications that emerged from it, circulated internationally and put Vancouver on the map as an artistic hub. Recognized as an accomplished curator, Morris is also the co-founder of Western Front Society, Vancouvers first artist-run centre, and the Morris/Trasov Archive at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at University of British Columbia. Over the past 45 years, Morris has

produced an exceptional body of work in film, photography, video, installation and performance and is known primarily for his intelligent, dazzling and ambitious abstract paintings and prints. His work is held in many important collections including the National Gallery of Canada, The Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Ludwig Museum (Cologne, Germany) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, England). He currently lives and works in both Vancouver and Victoria.

Michael Morris

2011 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts

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Barbara Sternberg never thought of herself as an artist when she first started to play with her fathers 16mm camera. Today she is recognized as one of Canadas most distinctive and innovative media artists with a stellar 35 year production and exhibition history. Sternberg is a trailblazer with a rare ability to see and show the human condition; the intersection of film and life is the area of her work. She often uses the painstaking process of optical printing to transfer Super 8 images to 16mm to produce her works. Her groundbreaking films have been screened widely across Canada and internationally, including at The Museum of Modern Art (New York) and

Outstanding Contribution

Figure with Blue Arms, 2004, oil on canvas, 101.5 x 81.5 cm. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Purchase, Louise Lalonde Lamarre Memorial Fund. (photo: MMFA, Christine Guest)

Portrait of the artist as a forgotten teen idol, by Nancy Tousley in Steven Shearer, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, The Power Plant, Toronto, 2007. (Cover image: Steve Payne)

Shirley Wiitasalos highly-celebrated talent as a contemporary painter has received critical and public attention throughout her career. Undaunted by the mediums rich history, Wiitasalo creates work that is unpredictable, challenging and new. From her evocative imagery to her recent explorations that employ a more reductive vocabulary, Wiitasalo is interested in unravelling the mystery of painting itself. She has participated in solo exhibitions at The Power Plant, Toronto (2000), the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (1993) and the Art Gallery of

Ontario (1987), in several important group exhibitions across Canada, including at the National Gallery of Canada (1989), and internationally at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany (1994), the Fodor Museum, Amsterdam (1984), 49th Parallel, New York (1982) and the National Museum of Art, Tokyo (1981). Her work is in many major national public collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada. Wiitasalo was born in Toronto where she continues to live and work.

Whether shes writing criticism, reviewing, blogging or tweeting, Nancy Tousley is either creating a buzz in Canadas art scene or is plugged in to one. Known primarily for her indispensable work for Canadian Art magazine and the Calgary Herald, where she was an art critic for 30 years, Tousley is able to make art accessible and relevant. Described as engaged, meticulous and fair, she respects the artists she interviews and the readers who follow her work. Of note are her contributions to art publications, her catalogue essays, her work as an independent curator and the numerous

awards she has received for outstanding achievement in arts journalism from the Canadian Museums Association, the Ontario Association of Art Galleries and the Province of Alberta to name a few. Originally from Louisiana, Tousley lived in New York for 10 years before moving to Toronto in 1975 and Alberta in 1977. In 2010, the Alberta College of Art + Design appointed her as the schools first critic-inresidence. Tousley currently lives and works in Calgary.

Nancy Tousley

Barbara Sternberg Shirley Wiitasalo

Canada Council for the Arts

Beating, 1995, 64 minutes, 16mm film

Calming, 2006, sterling silver, gold-filled wire, 24k gold plate, 46 x 13 x 12 cm. Private collection. (photo: Perry Jackson)

the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris). Her work is in many major collections, such as the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada. Sternberg has worked in other media including performance and installation and since 2000, has also made a number of videos. Also of note is her role as co-founder of Struts Gallery, an artist-run centre in Sackville, New Brunswick and founding member of Pleasure Dome, a film artist exhibition group in Toronto. Sternberg currently lives and works in Toronto.

saidye bronfman award

Kye-Yeon Sons metal objects, which are delicate, fragile, elegant and powerful, quietly command attention. To Son, line is the most important element of expression because of its ability to move. Movement through direction, space, volume and texture is mastered in Sons work, whether the object is sculptural, such as her wire vessels, or functional, such as her silver teapots. Born in South Korea, Son received her bachelor of fine arts from Seoul National University and her master of fine arts from Indiana University. She has exhibited her works in numerous solo and group exhibitions in public and commercial galleries across Canada, the United States, South Korea, Germany, Japan and England. Son immigrated to Montreal in 1984, joined the faculty of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in 1995 and became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2000. Among her many awards are the 2006 NICHE Award and several Awards of Excellence from the Metal Arts Guild, Toronto. Son currently lives and works in Halifax.

Kye-Yeon Son

2011 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts

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Index on the Arts

$45.6 billion
impact of arts and culture on the Canadian economy (Statistic Canada, 2010)

$22,700
average income of an artist; national average is $36,300 (2006 census data)

609,000
people employed in the arts and culture sector (Statistics Canada, 2006)

0.08%
Canada Council budget as percentage of total federal government spending (2008 - 2009)

$5.31
annual cost of the Canada Council per Canadian (2010 - 2011)

$154.5 million
Canada Council direct investment in the arts (2010 - 2011)

90%
percentage of Canadians who feel that live performance spaces in their communities contribute to their quality of life (Canadian Heritage, 2007)

86%
percentage of Canadians who attended at least one type of arts or cultural event or activity in the past year (Canadian Heritage, 2007)

1,859
communities in Canada in which grants, prizes, and Public Learning Rights payments were awarded (2010 - 2011)

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