CARDIFF / MILLER WIN $50,000 HNATYSHYN AWARD

Detail from Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, The Paradise Institute, 2001, The National Gallery of Canada, anonymous gift.

Following a remarkably successful, years-long partnership that has created groundbreaking work in installation, sound and video art, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller have been awarded the third annual $50,000 Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award. Long associated with the arts community in Lethbridge and the University of Lethbridge, they currently divide their time between central B.C. and Berlin, Germany.

In 2002, Cardiff and Bures Miller became the first Canadian artists to win the Venice Biennale Special Award for their installation work, The Paradise Institute, which has since been acquired by the National Gallery of Canada. The same year, Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet was awarded the Millennium Prize by the National Gallery. Their tandem work has been presented at contemporary art spaces around the world, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern in London. Their 2008 work A Murder of Crows was presented at the Sydney Biennale in Australia.

Created in 2006 in honour of the late Right Honourable Ramon Hnatyshyn, former Governor General of Canada, the Visual Arts Award recognizes Canadian mid-career artists and curators. The 2008 award was juried by a cross-Canada panel of artists, curators and gallerists, including Christina Ritchie of the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, the Glenbow Museum’s Jeffrey Spalding, Louise Dompierre of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Marc Mayer of the Musée d’art contemporain in Montreal, and Newfoundland artist Marlene Creates.

In choosing Cardiff and Bures Miller, the jury said “their poetic, multifaceted exhibitions have moved and influenced a number of generations of art makers across Canada and throughout the world. Their intelligent, thoughtful and emotionally moving art embraces our human frailty through a mix of genres: film noir, sci fi, experimental film. Their use of binaural “surround sound” and haunting music creates enchanting immersive experiences.”

The jury also gave a $15,000 curatorial award to Barbara Fischer of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto's Hart House (see page 44).