The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada has celebrated the works of Canadian laureates for 15 years. This year has produced works from artists in a variety of different mediums.
“There were several artists working with video and film, and I wanted to make sure they were well represented in the space,” said Rhiannon Vogl, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada.
Presented by the National Gallery in collaboration with the Canada Council for the Arts, the exhibition features selected works in film, photography, painting, and textile from the award winners.
The recognized artists are Edward Burtynsky, Philip Hoffman, Wanda Koop, Jane Kidd, Suzy Lake, Mark Lewis, and William Vazan. Toronto curator Marnie Fleming is also a recipient of the Outstanding Contributor Award.
“I feel like maybe some of the laureates’ names were internationally renowned, or nationally renowned . . . This is really exciting for me because it shows that vibrant active artists are still producing in Canada and being recognized for that,” Vogl said.
Unifying the selected works is an underlying motif of humanity’s relationship with the environment. This interpretation may relate to the natural environment, social environment, or even imagined spaces.
“I think all my art relates to that theme,” said visual artist Wanda Koop. Koop’s featured painting, titled “My Mother Lives on That Island,” was created after an intensive creative process including a journey on the St. Lawrence Seaway in an ocean freighter for seven days and seven nights.
“It speaks to longing and loss—all the things we as individuals go through in our lives . . . [My mother] was on the way to leaving the world when I painted it, and for me it was a way to put her somewhere—and for me it’s very reassuring to know she’s at the National Gallery,” Koop said.
This humanist element is concurrent throughout the exhibition.
Suzy Lake’s photographic prints, titled “Performing Haute Couture #1 and #2,” explore youth and beauty. Lake wears a Comme Des Garcons suit in a time-lapsed self-portrait. Lake said self-representation is a running theme in her work.
“The [modelling] field basically expects professional women to be attractive younger women, so it was a fun thing for me to photograph myself . . . as a woman who’s over 65, doing something that a 20-something would be doing,” she said.
An immigrant who came to Canada as a draft-dodger in 1968, Lake was overwhelmed to learn she had won the award.
“I started to cry because I chose Canada and Canada chose me,” she said, tearing up.
The exhibition’s theme of environment is particularly relative to Canada as a result of the exploitation of its resources, according to photographer Edward Burtynsky. His two contributions to the exhibit come from a five-year project he completed on the theme of water.
“The whole idea is reconnecting us to the wastelands that we create, making us aware of them, and then making us understand that that balance is now precariously getting out of control on us,” Burtynsky said.
One photograph depicts an empty stepwell in India, the other, ancient water from glaciers in Iceland entering the ocean flow.
“Canadians need to show stewardship in making sure that water is clean and properly managed, because it is a resource that we now manage,” he said.
The exhibition opens to the public March 24 and will run to Sep. 5.
