Nominator quotes
2020 to 2023 GGArts Celebration
2020 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts winners
Deanna Bowen, interdisciplinary artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Media arts
Montréal, Quebec
Nominator’s quote:
“Deanna Bowen’s multidisciplinary practice is an almost forensic practice. Deploying a wide range of media, the result is a body of work that distills and integrates several sources of truth into remarkably compelling artworks across a wide range of media that are diagnostic of the ways in which embedded racism informs our culture.
It’s as though this artist has two mirrors: one looking deeply inward and as far back as possible, the other looking outward, reflecting with great perceptiveness the embedded patterns of prejudice as they impact Canada’s Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ communities. With an uncanny ability to discover in an archive the heartbeat of the lives it recounts, its masked agendas, and the implications of decisions taken along the way, Deanna Bowen creates videos, installations and performance works that allow us to experience these grave and startling meanings as if for the first time.”
Nominator: Vera Frenkel, FRSC, multidisciplinary artist, GGArts winner, 2006.
Dana Claxton, artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Vancouver, British Columbia
Nominator’s quote:
“Having started her creative journey as a poet, Claxton’s visual arts practice is equal parts minimalist and lyrical. Yet her video work and performances are also always adept at confronting the commercialized commodity culture of entertainment as connected to the stereotyping and marginalization of Indigenous voices and bodies.
Claxton’s move from film and video to performance, photo, printed matter and relational practices are characteristic of the growth, risk-taking and experimentation that mark her prolific career.
Across her multifaceted practice, Claxton generously supports and encourages her creative peers and community members, while advancing an interdisciplinary visual arts practice that challenges all Canadians to reckon with the ongoing legacies of colonialism. She is a restless artist who continues to expand the representational and relational possibilities of each medium and format that she takes up, as she works to redress, provoke and expand the visual arts landscape of this country—and beyond.”
Nominator: Denise Ryner, former Director/Curator, on behalf of Or Gallery.
Ruth Cuthand, visual artist- Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Nominators’ quote:
“Ruth Cuthand is an artist, mentor, teacher, activist, and mother, and member of Little Pine First Nation. Her career has been devoted to exploring the impacts of colonialism on Indigenous people in Canada and resisting the forces of oppression through the use of sharp intellect, biting humour, and powerful aesthetics. She is well-known as a leading figure in contemporary Indigenous art as well as a powerful voice in the Canadian art scene’s ongoing discussions of colonialism, racism, and reconciliation. Her influence, mentorship, and support of many, past and present, have been an important component in the building of an infrastructure for contemporary Indigenous art in Canada.”
Nominators: Jen Budney, PhD, Research Fellow at Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives; Michelle Lavallee, former Director of Indigenous Art Centre at Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada; jake moore, Director of the University Art Galleries and Collection at the University of Saskatchewan.
Michael Fernandes, visual artist- Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
East Dover, Nova Scotia
Nominator’s quote:
“Michael is one of Canada’s foremost artists—a national (and Nova Scotian) treasure.
His performances and exhibitions are regarded as among the most conceptually sophisticated and aesthetically uncompromising works being undertaken in Canada today. His interdisciplinary projects engage a dialogue between art, contemporary politics, the environment, the body, identity and community. Always employing incisive humour and serious play, Michael’s work has consistently challenged viewers, critics, peers and students.
As the longest standing teacher in the history of NSCAD, Michael’s influence continues to be profound. He has inspired, confounded and guided hundreds of students at NSCAD since 1973. He has unfailingly
demonstrated a student-focused model of art education that instills in his students the understanding that success is doing what you want to do.”
Nominator: Craig Leonard, Associate Professor, Foundation/Expanded Media, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design.
Jorge Lozano Lorza, filmmaker and media artist- Artistic Achievement Award
Media arts
Toronto, Ontario
Nominator’s quote:
“Lozano was ahead of his time and pointed the way for future generations of media artists, finding new forms to disrupt and make visible the unmarked and invisible privileges of whiteness. Along the way he experimented self-reflexively with forms in order to address power relations that shape the production, reception, and mediation of race representations.
Jorge Lozano is an artist who continues to reinvent his forms, his ways of living, and his community. He is forever translating his thoughts and encounters into media moments, deeply concerned with the art of asking questions. Why this gender? Why this desire, this neighbourhood, this poverty? The artist’s commitment to experimentalism is animated by the necessity of these questions, which are forever opening, like the artist’s heart.”
Nominator: Mike Hoolboom, filmmaker, GGArts Laureate, 2017.
Kenneth Robert Lum, visual artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nominator’s quote:
“Ken works across a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography and public art, and is known for his poignant depiction of contemporary society.
He is a living national treasure, whose prolific body of work over the last three decades continues to truly reshape the imagination of people in Canada as an uncomfortable nation, fractured by historical trauma and made up of diverse peoples.
Ken’s work manages to depict great tensions in the collective identity of people and cultures who face the difficulties of authenticity and social belonging. He does this with humility, using images that are often colourful, yet plainly rendered, that disarm us and challenge us to reconfigure our closed perceptions towards shared humanity. In addition to the contribution of his work, Ken’s role within the cultural sector gives mobility and certainty to new generations of artists and cultural workers, especially those whom have been disadvantaged in access to the cultural sector.
I bring Ken forward [for this prize] because of his distinguished contribution to art, to artwork in the public realm, to art writing and curating, and to post-secondary education in Canada and abroad.”
Nominator: Brian McBay, Co-Founder and Executive Director 221A.
Anna Torma, visual artist - Saidye Bronfman Award
Fine craft
Baie Verte, New Brunswick
Nominator’s quote:
“Throughout her career, Anna Torma has drawn upon her life-changing experiences of emigration and conflicting responses to concepts of national identity, alongside a passion for documenting family and domestic life as an act of humility, love, and humour. Her congested surfaces are studies of the human
body, erotic energy, and fantastic creatures; they are places of memory and of imagination. And they are expressions of the joyous act of making by hand—of coming to terms with the world through art.
Torma has dedicated her professional life to an astonishingly singular studio practice that has emerged from an early, deep understanding of embroidery traditions and their place in global, contemporary visual culture.”
Nominator: Sarah Quinton, former Curatorial Director, on behalf of the Textile Museum of Canada.
Zainub Verjee, cultural administrator and arts advocate - Outstanding Contribution Award
Mississauga, Ontario
Nominator’s quote:
“Working with as much regard for the centre as for the periphery, Verjee’s modus operandi has been one of developing platforms for the disparate constituents of the Canadian artistic community . . . throughout her career in arts administration, she has managed to leaven effective space for ‘wild’ innovation and ‘undisciplined’ dissent. She has channelled these disruptive energies towards achieving change at the heart of power, while maintaining some degree of functional harmony for the whole.
As early as the 1980s, Zainub had begun to address what have since become the formative themes in Canadian visual and media arts. Through her art practice, critical writings, distribution activities, programming, policy work and leadership, she has taken bold and challenging positions on questions of diversity, access, technology and artist's rights. All these issues have become pillars in the formation of the sector.”
Nominator: Niranjan Rajah, Assistant Professor, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Artist, Theorist, Curator.
2021 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts winners
Germaine Arnaktauyok, visual artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
Nominator’s quote:
“[Arnaktauyok] has been creating art for most of her life. ‘When I was a child, it seemed natural for me to make art. I can remember drawing on gum wrappers and any bits and pieces of paper I could find...I never questioned being an artist. It seems I knew exactly what I wanted to be, and then I just worked at it.’
Arnaktauyok’s contribution to Canadian art is significant. She has been a serious artist for over 60 years and has continued to explore and develop artistically and professionally. She has charted her own course and created her own unique visual language and her lifelong interest in her own unique Inuit culture has been an inspiration to many younger artists.”
Nominator: Darlene Coward Wight, Curator of Inuit Art, on behalf of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Lori Blondeau, visual artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Nominator’s quote:
“Blondeau’s artwork advances on many fronts. In her performance and photographic practice, Blondeau frequently adopts personae that confront the hegemonic, violent images of Indigenous women that proliferate throughout settler culture.
Blondeau’s photography is deeply connected with her work as a performance artist, which she has made central to her practice. Like the photographs, the performances can be understood as interventions into the settler rhetoric and colonial imaginary.
Blondeau remains a decisive figure in Indigenous and Canadian contemporary art. Her artwork, activism, curatorial work and pedagogy are essential, and her transformative work continues to be groundbreaking and relevant.”
Nominator: Nasrin Himada, former Curator, on behalf of Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.
Dempsey Bob, artist, sculptor - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Terrace, British Columbia
Nominator’s quote:
“As a sculptor, Dempsey Bob has made his life’s work the pursuit of knowledge of the past great works by Tlingit and Northwest Coast artists.
Dempsey Bob provides leadership, support and guidance to many Northwest Coast artists studying the sculptural works of great masters from the past, while he himself brings a new meaningful variation of this world-renowned art form to a contemporary audience. He is recognized as one of few master carvers of his Nation who is pushing the art forward, successfully blending contemporary with the traditional style of Tahltan-Tlingit sculptural art, while remaining true to its complex protocols and unique design history.
‘Mr. Bob has passed on his learning and his skill to younger generations of First Nations artists, but also reached out to Indigenous people across the world. His success in doing so has immeasurable significance for the future. Bob’s work has always honoured his ancestors. He has, in his turn, become an honoured ancestor figure to succeeding generations of First Nations artists.’ – Charlotte Townsend Galt, Professor Emeritus, Art History, Visual Art and Theory, University of British Columbia. Honorary Professor, Anthropology, University College London.”
Nominator: Jim Logan, Visual Artist.
Luc Courchesne, media artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Media arts
Montréal, Quebec
Nominator’s quote:
“By inventing a device that allows for visual immersion, [Courchesne] was able to include panascopic images in his installations, an innovation that transforms viewers of the work into visitors, actors and even inhabitants of his experiential contrivances.
His work has made him one of the key creators/inventors to have opened new avenues and blazed new trails for practices that are sure to grow in leaps and bounds as fresh generations of creators enter the field of digital art.
As the owner of the gallery that exhibits his works, I have had the honour of working with Courchesne since 2003, and we have collaborated on more than 25 occasions. I am particularly proud of this association with an internationally recognized artist who is a pioneer in new media and the digital arts, and the first recipient working in the digital arts to receive the Prix Paul-Émile Borduas in 2019.”
Nominator: Pierre-François Ouellette, Director, on behalf of Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (PFOAC).
Bonnie Devine, visual artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Toronto, Ontario
Nominator’s quote:
“[Devine’s] impactful art practice, commitment to bringing forth an Indigenous voice, contribution to revisionist research and post-secondary education—particularly for Indigenous students—make her a candidate worthy of this honour.
Devine’s art practice and research has stimulated change and inspired action. It has had a powerful impact, reverberating within the cultural community and planting seeds for much-needed healing and reconciliation.
Her voice speaks heart to heart, eye to eye, fiercely compassionate yet determined to reveal the true underpinning of our culture. There is something urgent about Devine’s work that draws from the past and projects into the future, creating ongoing resonance. At a time when the world is in great need of transformation, Devine’s work offers a path to new possibilities by reminding us of our histories. This assertion of the Anishinaabek is a gift to learn from.”
Nominator: Celeste Scopelites, Director, on behalf of the Art Gallery of Peterborough.
Cheryl L’Hirondelle, interdisciplinary artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Media Arts
Toronto, Ontario and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Nominators’ quote:
“In an artistic practice that spans forty years, with regional and international exhibitions alongside works made in the most rural communities, Cheryl L’Hirondelle has created long-standing artistic contributions, collaborations and friendships, garnering utmost respect from those within and far beyond art worlds.
In current times of political, cultural and environmental upheaval, the world is in desperate need of artists like Cheryl L’Hirondelle, who can help us to create new social formations and to bridge knowledges, communities and histories.
Cheryl L’Hirondelle is a consummate artist in a life-long state of learning, who in turn teaches those around her to recognize and creatively transgress established boundaries so that everyone is invited, every being is honoured and every place can shelter.”
Nominators: The O’kinādās Collective (Peter Morin, Ayumi Goto, Stephen Foster); France Trépanier, visual artist, curator and researcher; and Dr. Julie Nagam, Canada Research Chair, Associate Professor, University of Winnipeg.
Lou Lynn, visual artist - Saidye Bronfman Award
Fine craft
Winlaw, British Columbia
Nominators’ quote:
“The trajectory of her career evinces a continual development and refinement of her technical skills and artistic vision, yet, throughout, her work has focused on the iconic forms of tools and other functional objects valued for their relevance to craft and role in human culture.
Lynn’s work is characterized by extraordinary craftsmanship, as defined by her mastery of relevant technologies and materials, attention to all aspects of production and presentation, a life-long interest in
the tools and implements associated with the history of handcraft and making, and her ability to invest form with presence.
Her work not only draws us in to admire its skillful and aesthetically pleasing facture—it makes us think about our histories as makers and about the hand, mind and body working in concert to create beautiful and functional objects that enrich our world.”
Nominators: Raine Mckay, Executive Director, on behalf of the Craft Council of British Columbia, and Amy Gogarty, artist and writer.
Bryce Kanbara, visual artist and curator - Outstanding Contribution Award
Hamilton, Ontario
Nominator’s quote:
“Bryce Kanbara has demonstrated a dynamic and outstanding commitment to the arts in the City of Hamilton, Ontario. Since 1970 he has made the visual environment of the city a culturally exciting, inviting and vibrant place to live in and be a part of. Bryce is a founding member of Hamilton Artists, Inc., established in 1970. HAI is one of the first of its kind in Canada, known for establishing other artist-run centres. It became the example of what artists can do when banding together, creating a union of voices and collective strength.”
Nominator: Shelley Niro, Artist.
2022 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts winners
Pierre Bourgault, visual artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec
Nominators’ quote:
“His artistic practice springs from his total commitment to the artistic ecosystem. Bourgault is a generous soul whose convictions are as prominent in his practice as they are in his social life, and his works—huge, radical and outspoken—reflect a voice that both carries and rejects the status quo. He is not content to stay within his comfort zone—he has a need to provoke and to rethink the world through art.
As one of the most brilliant and prolific exponents of public art, Bourgault opened up vital prospects for the development of the form. He persists in pushing sculpture off-centre, particularly with recurrent symbols (the megaphone and the tangle of string), which invite the eye to follow the trajectory of a word or a thread...”
Nominators: Gentiane Lafrance, art historian, and Anne-Marie Proulx, artist, Est-Nord-Est, résidence d’artistes.
Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, visual artists - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Toronto, Ontario
Nominator’s quote:
“Drawing on the visual languages of montage, tableau and staged documentary, Condé + Beverage have developed a unique approach to photography through using actors, fabricated sets and props, found objects and images and text. Conceptually and contextually, they are visual storytellers, combining archival research, oral history and references to art history and popular culture to address a wide range of local and global issues concerning the environment, climate change, health care, mass media, workers’ rights and immigration.
Socially engaged and politically grounded, Condé and Beveridge’s work is exemplary of the shift to the decolonial and the participatory in contemporary art. At the core of their artistic practice is a steadfast
commitment to represent and give voice to a diversity of class, race, gender, community and labour perspectives.”
Nominator: Dot Tuer, writer, curator and professor, OCAD University.
Moyra Frances Davey, visual artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Media arts
New York City, New York
Nominator’s quote:
“Davey’s expansive body of work represents the never-ending, deeply thoughtful considerations of an artist—where it’s such a pleasurable experience to witness and to listen to the connections Davey makes to other artists, writers, colleagues, family, old boyfriends and her much-loved pets.
Moyra Davey has had an extraordinary career as a senior artist, teacher and mentor to young MFA students. She is also a lecturer—so articulate in communicating the complexities of her video and photography practices to audiences—and a writer, whose texts are beautifully and eloquently composed and whose scripts are so vivid when spoken in front of the camera. She is an intensely engaged and influential participant in the art scene, both in Canada and abroad, whose works reside in public collections in major museums around the world. Davey is actively producing new work, enduring as an influential force as a brilliant, dedicated and productive Canadian artist.”
Nominator: John Goodwin, goodwater gallery.
David Ruben Piqtoukun, sculptor, artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Plainfield, Ontario
Nominator’s quote:
“Since the early 1970s, Piqtoukun has consistently retained the most important element in his work by focussing on his Inuit heritage. His visual storytelling incorporates diverse materials of various stones, bone, wood and, occasionally, feathers. He is a leader, with progressive innovations of contemporary
works incorporating Brazilian soapstone, Italian alabaster, marble, steel and bronze.
In exploring the human condition, Piqtoukun’s work speaks of and to people’s resilience. Through his work, he inspires, mentoring the younger generation with poignant narratives.”
Nominator: Judi Michelle Young, President, Sculptors Society of Canada (SSC) and Director of the Canadian Sculpture Centre (on behalf of the SSC).
Monique Régimbald‐Zeiber, visual artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Montréal, Quebec
Nominator’s quote:
“I have always felt that we were faced with an urgent need to ensure the dissemination of work such as Régimbald-Zeiber’s, because it is feminist, because it addresses large areas of inclusive thought and because it addresses groups ‘invisibilized’ by history, language and the dominant power.
Régimbald-Zeiber is a challenge to painting, active thinking and the constantly reinvented quest for the meaning of art in society. Let me emphasize that Monique Régimbald-Zeiber’s painting and writing, with their unique tone and impressive potential for thought development, occupy a very important space in the meaning we give to our visual culture.”
Nominator: Louise Déry, Director, Galerie de l’Université du Québec à Montréal.
Jocelyn Robert, artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Media arts
Québec City, Quebec
Nominator’s quote:
“The respect that Jocelyn has garnered among both the artistic and academic community is nothing short of exceptional and entirely well-deserved. In short, with unwavering commitment and integrity, he plays a key role in developing the next generations of Quebec artists—that is an immeasurable contribution to the community. He is a foundation, a support beam, a pillar—my hyperbolic architectural metaphors are designed to make explicit the extent to which he is a well-rounded foundational constituent of the artistic community.
Jocelyn is, without question, a singular artist, researcher, writer, teacher, academic, instigator, deviser, programmer and administrator. He integrates his multivalent talents and myriad research streams in unparalleled ways, always steadfastly making connections and building bridges.
Jocelyn Robert integrates his multivalent talents and myriad research streams in unparalleled ways, always steadfastly making connections and building bridges.”
Nominator: Christof Migone, associate professor, Department of Visual Arts, Western University.
Brigitte Clavette, jeweller and metalsmith - Saidye Bronfman Award
Fine craft
Fredericton, New Brunswick
Nominators’ quote:
“Clavette’s work is especially innovative and memorable thanks to her ability to pull away from traditional methods of fabrication of one object to complete compositions of parts. The work, which she sometimes refers to as functionless, crosses cultural and economic divides to create larger narratives.
Brigitte Clavette generously leads while advocating for others to succeed. Through her art and her lifelong involvement in mentorships, collectives and committee and board work, she has left an undeniably deep mark.”
Nominators: Maegen Black, former Executive Director, on behalf of the Canadian Crafts Federation, and Ann Manuel, visual artist.
Gerald McMaster, curator, artist, writer - Outstanding Contribution Award
Toronto, Ontario
Nominators’ quote:
“Gerald McMaster has curated numerous exhibitions that have been pivotal in changing opportunities for Indigenous artists in this country and abroad, and he has changed the intellectual and creative spaces for Indigenous art within institutions. He has written texts that are essential resources for teachers and
students, and he has developed exceptional collaborative models of dialogue and research for contemporary Indigenous art.
McMaster has played a critical role in transforming the presentation of institutional collections of Indigenous art and in bringing together the historical and the contemporary to change the conversation around permanent collections.”
Nominators: Sara Angel, Founder and Executive Director (with Jocelyn Anderson, former deputy director), The Art Canada Institute, and Aileen Burns, Co-Executive Director & CEO (with Johan Lundh), Remai Modern.
2023 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts winners
Evergon, gay politico and eroticist working in lens-based art - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Montréal, Quebec
Nominators’ quote:
“Through his art, he plainly represented human experiences that were personalized yet artistically common. Shaking up traditional social thinking, his work has brilliantly succeeded in formulating innumerable nuances of aesthetic judgement both in terms of formal and stylistic aspects and in terms of the subjects studied [...] Placing his own life at the forefront, as the main subject of his work, he has made a great contribution to Canadian art.”
Nominators: Karl-Gilbert Murray, critic and curator, and Jean-Jacques Ringuette, photography artist.
FASTWÜRMS, visual artists - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Mulmur, Ontario
Nominators’ quote:
“As an artist duo, FASTWÜRMS have done things that are incomparable in scope, longevity and scale. However, it is their impact through intergenerational collaboration with other artists that will have an even deeper effect—one that is felt through affective exchange rather than mammoth object production.
[...] Their contribution to the work of other artists through these collaborations is generous, never competitive, radically supportive, inclusive and positive.”
Nominators: Artists Diane Borsato, Deirdre Logue, and Allyson Mitchell.
Germaine Koh, artist - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Vancouver, British Columbia
Nominators’ quote:
“Over the last 30 years, Germaine has changed the terms of Canadian contemporary art, expanding our consciousness of what art can be, and making perceptible the invisible systems that connect us in everyday experience. [...] Germaine’s art demonstrates enduring interest in human systems and interactions, and the materials and technologies which link these to both natural and built environments.”
Nominators: Sarah Cook, independent curator, University of Glasgow; Joni Low, independent curator and critic, Simon Fraser University; and Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University.
Shannon Walsh, filmmaker - Artistic Achievement Award
Media arts
Vancouver, British Columbia
Nominator’s quote:
“Her work shows exceptional reach around some of the most urgent and pressing issues of our time, engaging the public in robust debate and bringing together artists, academics, practitioners, activists and community members. [...] Walsh explore[s] collaboration and collective learning as a formal method of creating work in front of, and behind, the camera.”
Nominator: Stephen Heatley, Professor and Department Head, Theatre and Film, University of British Columbia.
Tim Whiten, image maker & creator of cultural objects - Artistic Achievement Award
Visual arts
Toronto, Ontario
Nominators’ quote:
“During fifty years of cultural production, Tim Whiten has sought to navigate the territory of the human condition and its transformative potential. Rather than produce discrete, passive artworks for aesthetic contemplation, he creates cultural objects that can dynamically engage audiences in processes of self-reflection and self-awareness. His art making is ritual. His artistic and spiritual pursuits are intertwined, a singular mix of intellect, passion, intuition, subjectivity and psychological complexity.”
Nominators: Carolyn Bell Farrell and Virginia Eichhorn.
Nettie Wild, filmmaker - Artistic Achievement Award
Media arts
Vancouver, British Columbia
Nominators’ quote:
“Where documentary as a form has tended to explication, [Nettie Wild’s] work has focused on nuance, ambiguity, and the power of visuality to convey narratives of history, time, character, and place. [...] she is regarded as an icon of media arts for her courage in addressing difficult, intransigent issues in a way that illuminates their complexity while employing film’s potential as an artistic medium to engage the viewer’s imagination.”
Nominators: Alexandra Phillips, Associate Professor, Faculty of Culture and Community, Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
Grace Nickel, visual artist - Saidye Bronfman Award
Fine craft
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Nominator’s quote:
“Nickel applies an archaeobotanical lens to her investigations, referencing the past and present with regard to the life cycle of living organisms and to varied forms and functions of ceramics production.
Her work considers how the intimate and individual struggle for survival reflects the broader crises in which we find ourselves today, with climate change and resulting environmental catastrophes [being] top of mind. [...] Technical experimentation, conceptual refinement, and engagement with the contemporary craft community are hallmarks of Grace Nickel’s 40-year career in the ceramic arts.”
Nominator: Tammy Sutherland, Executive Director, Manitoba Craft Council, on behalf of the Manitoba Craft Council.
David Garneau, visual artist, curator, critical art writer - Outstanding Contribution Award
Regina, Saskatchewan
Nominators’ quote:
“Unobstructed by Western notions of expertise, David has refused a singular professional identity in his work as an artist, a critical writer and theorist, curator, educator, and in cultural policy. His multi-modal work is characterized by earnest inquiry; fearless testing of original principles and practices; and deep connections across communities. His drive is dedicated towards understanding and creating new ways to understand the visual arts of Métis and Indigenous peoples in settler colonial contexts, and he has been a key figure in the groundswell of creative, critical, and curatorial activity across Turtle Island over the past decades.”
Nominators: Risa Horowitz, visual and media artist, Professor, Department of Visual Arts, University of Regina, and Mary-Beth Laviolette, Independent Writer and Curator.