The Vancouver Art Gallery to Present 2018 BC Visual Art Awards

When: 7:00 pm, Thursday, May 24, 2018
Where: The Four Seasons Hotel
This Awards Ceremony is free and open to the public

 

On May 24, 2018, The Vancouver Art Gallery will present four distinguished BC artists with the most prestigious visual art awards in the Province: the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts and the VIVA Awards. This year, Susan Point will be the sixteenth recipient of the Audain Prize, supported by the Audain Foundation. Of the two 2018 VIVA Awards granted annually by the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts, one award will recognize co-recipients Hannah Jickling and Helen Reed, who will together receive this honour, and the second VIVA Award will be given to Charlene Vickers.

“The Vancouver Art Gallery is thrilled to recognize four outstanding artists with the most coveted arts awards in the Province. This is a night to celebrate and spotlight British Columbia’s finest artists whose work has had significant influence on visual arts in Canada,” said the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Director Kathleen S. Bartels. “We thank the Audain Foundation and the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for their generosity in establishing these awards and continuing to support and acknowledge the talent and commitment of BC artists.”

Audain Prize recipient Susan A. Point, O.C., DFA, DLitt, RCA, of the Musqueam First Nation, inherited ancestral learnings and the traditions of her people from her mother. Point is the Daughter of Edna Grant and Anthony Point, and the niece of Dominic Point and Mike Kew, who passed the traditional stories of the Musqueam on to her when she was a child. Point has been a key figure in re-establishing the vitality of Salish art, drawing inspiration from the designs of her ancestors and exploring the use of non-traditional materials to forcefully assert the vitality of Salish culture in the contemporary world. Point’s work has been widely exhibited in North America, Europe and Asia. She is represented in the collections of museums throughout Canada and the US and has produced more than forty public artworks for specific locations in BC and Washington. Susan excels using non-traditional materials and techniques, creating stand-alone sculptures and site specific works such as the ten-meter-high by 240-meter-long retaining wall in North Vancouver.An Officer of the Order of Canada, Point has been recognized with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her contributions to Canada.  She has also been acknowledged with an Indspire Achievement Award, a YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, a B.C. Creative Achievement Award, among other honours, and is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Point has Honourary Doctorates from: the University of Victoria; Simon Fraser University; the University of British Columbia; and Emily Carr University of Art and Design. In 2016, Point received the City of Vancouver’s Civic Merit Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award for First Nations Art from the BC Achievement Foundation. In 2017, an exhibition that surveyed her entire career titled Susan Point: Spindle Whorl was presented at Vancouver Art Gallery.

VIVA Award co-recipients Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling  have been collaborating since 2006. Their projects take shape as public installations, social situations, and events that circulate as photographs, videos, printed matter, and artists’ multiples. They are currently fascinated with collaborative research, especially in their recent projects with children. Reed and Jickling have exhibited and performed internationally, with both individual and collaborative work appearing in such venues as: The Portland Art Museum (OR), The Dunlop Art Gallery (SK), Smack Mellon (NY), Doris McCarthy Gallery (ON), The Yukon Arts Centre Gallery (YT), YYZ Artists’ Outlet (ON), Carleton University Art Gallery (ON), Dalhousie University Art Gallery (NS), Bästa Biennalen (SE), The Vancouver Art Gallery (BC), The Power Plant (ON) and Flat Time House’s first issue of NOIT (UK). In Fall 2017, they released Multiple Elementary, a book that explores the elementary school classroom as a site of invention and reception of contemporary art practices, published by YYZBOOKS. They are recipients of the 2016 Ian Wallace Award for Teaching Excellence (Emily Carr University of Art & Design) and a 2017 Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Public Art (City of Vancouver).

VIVA Award recipient Charlene Vickers’ work investigates memory, territorial embodiment and cultural gesture as connections to her birthplace of Kenora, Ontario. Vickers, who is Anishinaabe from Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation, explores her Ojibwa identity through painting, sculpture, performance and video. In a recent series of watercolour and gouache paintings, Vickers references traditional porcupine quillwork techniques as formal rhythms and patterns, which gain both subtle detail and increased abstraction with each iteration.Vickers holds a BA in Critical Studies and an MFA, both from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. She has participated in exhibitions and performances at Urban Shaman, Winnipeg; grunt galley, Vancouver; Artspeak, Vancouver; and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver. Vickers’ work is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia,Vancouver.

About the Awards

Established in 2004, the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts has become one of Canada’s most prestigious honours. Supported by the Audain Foundation, the Audain Prize grants $30,000 annually to a senior British Columbia artist selected by an independent jury. Previous winners of the Audain Prize include Carole Itter (2017), Paul Wong (2016), Michael Morris (2015), Fred Herzog (2014), Takao Tanabe and Gathie Falk (2013), Marian Penner Bancroft (2012), Rodney Graham (2011), Robert Davidson (2010), Liz Magor (2009), Jeff Wall (2008), Gordon Smith (2007), Eric Metcalfe (2006), E.J. Hughes (2005) and Ann Kipling (2004). For more info, visit vanartgallery.bc.ca

Established in 1988, the VIVA Awards are funded by the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts. The VIVA Awards were created to nurture the advancement of the visual arts in British Columbia and their appreciation by the public. Providing a minimum of $12,000 annually, these awards celebrate exemplary achievement by British Columbia artists in mid-career, chosen for outstanding accomplishment and commitment by an independent jury. For more info, visit vanartgallery.bc.ca

The Audain Prize and VIVA Awards will be presented by the Vancouver Art Gallery at the Four Seasons Hotel on Thursday, May 24 at 7:00 pm. This ceremony is free and open to the public.

 

About the Vancouver Art Gallery
Founded in 1931, the Vancouver Art Gallery is recognized as one of North America’s most respected and innovative visual arts institutions. The Gallery’s ground-breaking exhibitions, extensive public programs, and emphasis on advancing scholarship all focus on historical and contemporary art from British Columbia and around the world. Special attention is paid to the accomplishments of Indigenous artists, as well as to the arts of the Asia Pacific region—through the Institute of Asian Art that the Gallery founded in 2014. The Gallery’s programs also explore the impacts of images in the larger sphere of visual culture, design and architecture. www.vanartgallery.bc.ca

The Vancouver Art Gallery is a not-for-profit organization supported by its members, individual donors, corporate funders, foundations, the City of Vancouver, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.