Seven artists honoured for work
Multi- disciplinary aboriginal artist, formerly of Vancouver, among recipients
A former Vancouver artist who now lives in Winnipeg is among seven artists from across Canada who will each receive a prize of $ 25,000 to recognize their artistic work.
The Canada Council announced the winners Tuesday of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Governor General David Johnston will present the awards at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on March 20. The National Gallery in Ottawa will exhibit their works March 22 to June 23. The winners are:
• Rebecca Belmore, an Anishinaabe aboriginal artist who worked in Vancouver and now lives in Winnipeg, and represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2005. She uses sculpture, photography, performance, installation and video in an art that is rooted in the reality of aboriginal communities to address the impacts and legacies of colonialism.
• Marcel Barbeau has been an abstract painter and sculptor for more than 60 years. He and other members of the Automatiste movement of nonfigurative painters signed the Refus Global manifesto that called for artistic and social freedom in 1948.
• Chantal Pontbriand is being honoured for her work as an art critic and curator. As a co- founder of Parachute magazine in 1974 and director until 2007, she created a platform for critical discourse about contemporary art as it took on a social function.
• Greg Payce, a ceramicist and teacher in Calgary, is the winner of the Saidye Bronfman Award for craft, which is funded from a $ 1.5- million endowment made by the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Foundation in 2006.
• William MacGillivray of Rose Bay, N. S., has been making and directing documentary and fiction films for 40 years. His latest film, Hard Drive, will be released in 2013.
• Gordon Monahan is a sound artist, musicologist, composer and bandleader who divides his time between Meaford, Ont., and Berlin. He is the co- founder of the Electric Eclectics festival.
• Colette Whiten is a sculptor and installation artist who taught at OCAD University in Toronto. She works with wood, plaster, Fiberglas, textiles and glass to explore issues of gender, emotion, domination and the struggle for power.