Mayor's Arts Award for Visual Arts

2017 Recipients

Judy Radul

Honouree

Judy Radul’s latest works involve an original computer controlled system for live and pre-recorded video. Her practice also includes sculpture, photography, writing and performance. Recent exhibitions include: a solo exhibition at Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 2017; Contour Biennale 8, Mechelen, Belgium, 2017; Bienal de Nicaragua, 2016; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2015; Berlin Biennale 8, 2014; DAAD Galerie, 2013.

Her large-scale media installation World Rehearsal Court (2009) has been shown in Vancouver, Vienna, Seoul, Oslo and Moscow. Related to this project, with Marit Paasche she co-edited a book of collected essays and images A Thousand Eyes: Media Technology, Law and Aesthetics (Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2011). She has a BA in Fine and Performing Arts from Simon Fraser University and a MFA in Visual and Media Arts from Bard College, New York. She is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery and teaches at Simon Fraser University.

Julian Hou

Emerging artist

Julian Hou is an artist living as a guest on unceded Coast Salish territory, working in audio, digital media, performance, and installation. He has recently participated in solo and group exhibitions: 8eleven, Toronto; Spareroom, Vancouver; Artspeak, Vancouver; the Vancouver Art Gallery; 221A @ Occidental Temporary, Paris; L'escalier, Montreal; CSA Space, the Audain Gallery, Simon Fraser University, and The Apartment, Vancouver.

Hou has also recently held performances at Kamias Triennale, Manila; Things that can happen, Hong Kong; Damien and the Love Guru, Brussels; and the Vancouver Art Gallery. He was a curatorial resident at 221A in 2014, and has co-curated projects at Model Projects, Vancouver with Tiziana La Melia.

Past recipients

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2016 recipients

Dana Claxton

Honouree

Dana Claxton is a critically acclaimed exhibiting artist, film and video maker. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Art Centre (Minneapolis), and Sundance Film Festival (Salt Lake City) and is held in collections including the Vancouver Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Art Bank of Canada and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Her awards include the VIVA Award and the Eiteljorg Fellowship. The Vancouver Art Gallery has slated a retrospective of her artwork for 2018.

Dana held the Ruth Wynn Woodward Research Chair in the Women’s Studies Department at SFU and the GlobalTelevision Chair in the School of Journalism at the University of Regina. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC. She was born in Yorkton, Saskatchewan and is a member of the Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation.

Carlos Colín

Emerging artist

Carlos Colín was born inGuadal ajara, Jalisco, Mexico in 1980 and grew up in Mexico City. He studied Visual Communication and Design, and received an MFA at the National School of Fine Arts in Mexico City. He completed a second MFA at the University of British Columbia. He has exhibited widely in Vancouver and in Mexico including at the Vancouver Art Gallery Auction; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Satellite Gallery; and the Rufino Tamayo Biennial of Painting in Mexico City. Carlos is represented by Fazakas Gallery.

Carlos currently lives and works in Vancouver, where he is pursuing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at UBC. One of his research goals is to expose new generations in Latin America and in Canada to Latin American theories, culture, and knowledge in order to better understand and value the wealth and diversity of Mexico and Latin America.
2015 recipients
Brian Jungen

Honouree

Brian Jungen lives and works in BC’s north Okanagan and Vancouver. He is a sculptor and multidisciplinary artist.

Brian employs repurposed materials, using both contemporary and traditional techniques. His works often prompt viewers to consider the distances and proximities between cultures and between humans and nature.

A member of the Dane-zaa First Nation, Brian came to prominence in the 1990s with a series of masks made of Nike sneakers – a comment, in part, on his own mixed European–Dane-zaa heritage, as well as on the impact of global capitalism on Aboriginal cultures.

Later works include giant whale skeletons made of plastic lawn chairs, totem poles made of golf bags, and a teepee made of black sofa leather.

His recent work focuses on conceptual and modernist forms and their relationship to so-called “primitivism”.

He won the first Sobey Art Award in 2002 and received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 2010.

Brian is represented by Catriona Jeffries in Vancouver and Casey Kaplan in New York.

Ron Tran

Emerging artist

Ron Tran studied at Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design and has participated in group and solo exhibitions in Canada, Europe, and Asia, including at:
- Museion, Bozen/Bolzano, Bolzano
- Berlin Biennial 6, Berlin
- East International 2007, Norwich
- Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montreal
- Liu-Haisu Museum, Shanghai
- Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver
- Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver
- Artspeak, Vancouver
- 221A, Vancouver
Ron was recently awarded the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien residency in Berlin (2013-2014).

His work has been featured in Avant-Gardes of The 21st Century published by Phaidon Press.

Ron’s art practice is more ethereal than tangible and resides as much in the imagination of the audience as it does in the gestures of artistic process and the actual material outcome.

Ron works across disciplines and often in public spaces, orchestrating scenarios in which he relies on the trustworthiness of strangers. For example, for Apartment #201, Ron removed and displayed his apartment’s door for the duration of the exhibition.
2014 recipients

Elspeth Pratt

Honouree

Elspeth Pratt is a visual artist who lives and works in Vancouver. She produces sculptural work that negotiates the line between abstraction and representation to explore the built environment and public space.

Elspeth has exhibited in Canada, the US, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and Italy. Her work is in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Oakville Galleries, Glenbow Museum, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, RBC Art Collection, and in numerous private collections.

In 2011, the Vancouver Art Gallery commissioned Second Date, a large-scale artwork as part of Offsite, their ongoing outdoor public art program. Nonetheless, a monograph recently published by Emily Carr University Press, considers Elspeth’s work through the presentation of six scholarly essays and images.

Elspeth is an associate professor and director of the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. She is represented by Diaz Contemporary in Toronto.

Laura Piasta

Emerging artist

Laura Piasta is a Vancouver artist who received a bachelor of fine arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2006. In 2008, she moved to Europe where she completed her master of fine arts at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden in 2012.

Her work has been exhibited at a number of institutions in Europe and Canada including Auto Centre Berlin, Bildmuseet Sweden, Blanket Gallery, the Contemporary Art Gallery, and Or Gallery in Vancouver.

In 2012, Laura was an artist in residence at The Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Factory of Art and Design in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was recently shortlisted for the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver’s Emerging Artist Prize and is a finalist in this fall’s RBC Canadian Painting Competition.
2013 recipients

Myfanwy MacLeod

Honouree

Myfanwy MacLeod is a visual artist who lives and works in Vancouver. She received her bachelor of fine arts from Concordia University in 1990, and a master of fine arts from the University of British Columbia in 1995. MacLeod has exhibited her work throughout Canada, Australia, the United States and Europe. She is currently working on a major solo exhibition of her work that will open at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2014.

Her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery and in private Canadian collections. MacLeod has been the recipient of awards from La Fondation André Piolat (1994), Doris and Jack Shadbolt Foundation (1999), the City of Vancouver Live/Work studio residency (2003-2005), and the Glenfiddich Distillery artist-in-residence program (2005).

In the spring of 2010, MacLeod’s large-scale sculptural commission “The Birds” opened to public acclaim at the Olympic Plaza in Vancouver's Southeast False Creek Plaza. MacLeod is represented by the Catriona Jeffries Gallery.

Visit the Catriona Jeffries Gallery website

Derek Brunen

Emerging artist

Derek Brunen draws inspiration from the history of art, cinema, and popular culture. His work investigates the relationships between systems of knowledge and belief, specifically the implications that each carry for the subject. Essential themes of duration and disappearance have also emerged throughout his practice, which ranges from video and performance to photography and sculpture.

Recent exhibitions include The Way of the Shovel: On the Archaeological Imaginary in Art, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, 2013); In Search Of…, Academy Minerva and the Christian Reformed Church (Groningen and Nieuwe Beerta, NL, 2012); Again and Again and Again: Serial Formats and Repetitive Actions, Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver, 2012); Rapid Waking, ZINGERpresents (Amsterdam, 2011); and Don’t Come if You Care, Sils Project Space (Rotterdam, 2011).
2012 recipients

Jim Breukelman

Honouree

Jim Breukelman was born in Trinidad in 1941. Before moving to Canada he lived with his family in Bogotá, Columbia, New York, NY, White Plains, NY, and Geneva, Switzerland. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he majored in photography under Harry Callahan and minored in graphic design under Malcolm Greer and Dieter Roth.

In 1967, he was hired by the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) to plan and implement a diploma program in fine art photography. Under Breukelman’s guidance, it developed into a four-year degree program that was one of the first in Canada to incorporate both traditional and cross-disciplinary practices.

From 1967 to 2000, in his various roles as photography instructor, department head of photography, and dean of media arts, Breukelman has had a significant influence on the development of photographic art and artists in Vancouver. Since leaving ECUAD in 2000, he has concentrated on developing his ideas and themes in photography and exhibiting his work.

Breukelman’s work has been shown at numerous galleries throughout Metro Vancouver as well as across Canada and the US. He is currently represented by Republic Gallery. His works are included in both public and private collections across Canada, and have been published nationally and internationally.

Hua Jin

Emerging artist

Hua Jin is a visual artist who has exhibited photo-based works in Canada, China, and the Netherlands. Jin was born in China and lived in Shanghai before moving to Vancouver in 2007.

Originally trained as an animator and graphic designer, Jin has also worked as an artistic and creative director. Her works are included in many publications and private collections including the public collection of Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai (MOCA).

She was the winner of the Canadian SnapStar photo competition (2012), the TOP20 Chinese Contemporary Photographer Award (2011), and received first place in the Canon Photography Awards in the 2012 Emily Carr Grad Exhibition.

She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2012 and is currently studying at Concordia University for a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography.

The 2012 peer jury was Marian Penner Bancroft, Christos Dikeakos, and Stan Douglas.
2011 recipients

Stan Douglas

Honouree

Stan Douglas is a visual artist who lives and works in Vancouver. His films, videos, and photographs have been seen in exhibitions internationally, including Documentas IX (1992), Documentas X (1997), and Documentas XI (2002), and three Venice Biennales (1990, 2001, 2005).

A comprehensive survey of his work, Past Imperfect: Works 1986–2007, was mounted by the Württembergischer Kunstverein and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in the fall of 2007.

Between 2004 and 2006, Stan was a professor at Universität der Künste Berlin and since 2009 has been a member of the core faculty in the Graduate Department of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Julia Feyrer

Emerging artist

Julia Feyrer is an artist who works primarily in 16mm film. Past activities have included drumming for the band They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, co-editing the audiozine Spoox, and authoring Comedy Tragedy, an artist book published by Perro Verlag Press. She recently graduated with a Meisterschülerin from the Städelschule in Frankfurt. She lives in Vancouver.

The 2011 peer jury was Liz Magor, Marian Penner Bancroft, and Christos Dikeakos.
2010 recipients

Christos Dikeakos

Honouree

Christos Dikeakos has played an important role in the rise of conceptual and photo-conceptual art in Vancouver since the late 1960s.

His works are concerned with the layering of histories over time and the significance of urban spaces as sites to activate memory. Dikeakos’ practice pays particular attention to Vancouver’s local histories, such as the First Nations peoples’ and the urban vernacular of the interior of British Columbia, and focuses on the indexing and scanning of material urban reality as a critique of urban expansion and its socio-political effects.

He has participated in various group exhibitions including the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Visions of British Columbia: A Landscape Manual and Gallery Bergen’s Out of the Blue, Paramus, New Jersey in 2009. Dikeakos is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery in Vancouver.

Alex Morrison

Emerging artist

Alex Morrison is a Vancouver-based artist whose work looks at the relationships between history-making practices, both aesthetic and political, seeking to pose questions about power, context, reception, and meaning.

Alex’s work has recently been presented nationally and internationally in solo exhibitions at Artspeak, Vancouver (2010); Every Letter in the Alphabet, Vancouver (2010); Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver (2007); Büro Friedrich, Berlin, Germany (2005); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2004); Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (2004); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2004); and Frankfurt Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany (2003).

His work has also recently been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, including the Sydney Biennial (2010), Following a Line, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2010), Cubes, Blocks and Other Spaces, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2009) and Exponential Future, Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2008).

The 2010 peer jury was Liz Magor and Marian Penner Bancroft.
2009 recipients

Marian Penner Bancroft

Honouree

Marian Penner Bancroft's photography has been exhibited nationally and internationally for over 30 years and can be found in a number of collections, including those of the Contemporary Photography (National Art Gallery) in Ottawa.

Her most recent solo exhibitions have been at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris and Republic Gallery in Vancouver. Current interests are the intersections of the photographic image with history, music, and mapping strategies in relation to representations of the landscape.

Ms Bancroft studied at UBC, the Vancouver School of Art (now ECUAD), and Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto. She has taught at SFU and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and is an associate professor in photography at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Elizabeth Zvonar

Emerging artist

Elizabeth Zvonar is an artist who graduated from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2001.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the Contemporary Art Gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Artspeak Gallery, and Western Front Gallery, all in Vancouver; Cohan and Leslie, New York; Sign Gaienmae Gallery, Tokyo; and at Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium.

In 2008, Ms Zvonar was the inaugural artist at the Malaspina Print Research Residency and was an artist in residence at the Banff Centre for the Janice Kerbel led thematic, Cosmic Ray research. She currently has an exhibition of sculpture and collage at the Contemporary Art Gallery entitled On Time. Ms Zvonar lives and works in Vancouver.

The 2009 peer jury was Grant Arnold, Myfanwy MacLeod, and Liz Magor.
2008 recipient

Liz Magor

Honouree

This Vancouver-based Canadian artist works in and teaches sculpture, photography, and installation. Educated at the University of British Columbia, Parson’s School of Design in New York, and the Vancouver School of Art, she has been making and exhibiting art since 1973, including exhibitions such as Documenta 8, The Venice Biennale, and the Sydney Biennale.

Her work has been shown at galleries across Canada, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Power Plant in Toronto, and the Musée d’art Contemporain in Montreal. She has been an Associate Professor of Visual Art at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design since 1999.

The 2008 peer jury was Amir Ali Alibhai, Greg Bellerby, Barbara Cole, David Dove, Arthur Erikson, Gathie Falk, Anne Marie Fleming, Susan Gordon, Michel Jacob, Bruno Marti, Terry McEvoy, Laurie McGauley, Barbara-Jo McIntosh, John McLachlan, George McWhirter, Eric Metcalfe, Jonathan Middleton, Melanie O’Brian, Stephen Osborne, Christina Ritchie, Jim Sinclair, Trudy Van Dop, Lorenz von Ferson, and Hal Wake.