Published on Feb 23, 2016
Sandra Meigs won the Gershon Iskowitz Prize and a Governor General's Award in the Visual Arts in 2015. Sandra is creative & playful but her work also has amazing depth and is a portrayal of her life experiences.
Shaw TV Victoria BC 4 minute Interview with Lorraine Scollan February 2016
SANDRA MEIGS WINS THE 2015 GERSHON ISKOWITZ PRIZE
The Gershon Iskowitz Foundation in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is pleased to announce that Sandra Meigs is the recipient of the 2015 GERSHON ISKOWITZ PRIZE AT THE AGO.
The award, which is presented annually to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada, includes a $50,000 cash prize and a solo exhibition at the AGO, coming in 2017.
"This brings me back to All to All and the space where the profound coexists with artistic play. In this new exhibition, the quantity and material qualities of the work push “play” at another level. As an installation it may first look and sound like its key influences were the “Ex” fairgrounds, the Party City Superstore, and a dash of Marcel Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs. Its dozens of colorful painted-paper disks are hung from small banner-like grommets, and they curl off the wall like posters or prizes. Round cookie tins filled with coins clank as they spin on motors and handless, numberless wall-clocks tick a time unknown......" Kelly Jazvac
Read MoreRecorded in Meigs' studio and aired on July 19, 2015, on CBC Radio, an interview for North By Northwest by the fabulous Sheryl MacKay. Meigs talks about making her upcoming exhibition "All to All".
All to All
September 10 - October 24, 2015
Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
All to All
In All to All everything that is the Individual is also everything that is possible in the Universe. There is nothing and there is everything. Time exceeds space. Space is infinite in immensity. Particles of matter are infinite in tininess.
All to All is prolific in individual forms and to be continued. All the forms are circular. There are 10 paintings on 4’ diameter canvases, 150 paintings on 16” diameter paper, 7 chiming wall clocks that do not tell time, 6 rotating cookie tins that make a racket of noise, and 15 black plaster disks representing the Ego, in small, medium, and large sizes. In the upstairs gallery The Bones in Golden Robes self-activate in a revolving motion. Everyday the artist will raise the amplitude of vibration throughout the space of the exhibition through the playing of a gong for 15 minutes. In All to All there are: The Mystics (10), Elevators (30), EGOs, small, medium and large (15), the rotating Tins (6), Chiming Unclocks (7), Spinning Bones in Golden Robes (6), and a 34” Chau Gong.
A reception in honour of Sandra Meigs was held at Open Space on Wednesday, March 25th, 5:00–8:00 p.m.
Helen Marzolf (nominator), Sandra Meigs
Rick Leong, Sandra Meigs
Clint Hutzulak (web designer), Sandra Meigs
Daniel Laskarin, Paul Walde
Graham Macaulay, Abbey Bennett, Gillian Robertson
Laurie Freeman, Megan Dickie, Christine Walde
The Canada Council for the Arts and the National Gallery of Canada cordially invite you to a reception and exhibition opening honouring the winners of the 2015 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
5:30 – 7:30 pm
Great Hall, National Gallery of Canada
380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa
Cash bar
RSVP by Wednesday, April 8, 2015
1-800-263-5588 ext. 6031
prizes@canadacouncil.ca
Visit ggavama.canadacouncil.ca to learn more about this year's winners.
If you know of someone who would like to be on our invitation list, share this link!
The Gallery and its parking are wheelchair accessible.
Sandra Meigs at home. Photo by Nik West
Department of Visual Arts professor and nationally renowned painter Sandra Meigs was named one of only eight winners in the annual Governor General’s Awards for Visual and Media Arts on March 24.
“It’s such an honour to be recognized in this capacity for my career as an artist,” says Meigs. “You get benchmarks of recognition as you go along … but this is something very ceremonial, very special.”
Highly regarded for her expressive interdisciplinary artworks, Meigs has led a distinguished 35-year contemporary art career with over 40 solo and 60 group exhibitions in Canada’s most culturally relevant institutions. “You can call it a lifetime achievement award, but in a way I see it as the beginning of a new lifetime,” says Meigs. “Some artists make brilliant work in their last 20 years, so for me it’s less lifetime achievement and more career achievement.”
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1953, Meigs has lived in Canada since 1973. She earned her BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and an MA in Philosophy at Dalhousie University in 1980. A member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Artists who also represented Canada in the Fifth Biennale of Sydney, Meigs has been a professor with Visual Arts since 1993 and served as departmental chairfrom 1997 to 2002.
“We have some of the top contemporary artists in the country here and we have very high standards for all our sessional instructors,” she says of the department’s dynamic learning environment. “We focus so intensely on studio practice for the students—we look at everything very carefully, and talk about it in a constructive but critical way, how it’s related to current art context and theoretical ideas of contemporary art. It’s all very exciting. That’s the great strength of UVic’s Visual Arts program—walk through any of the studios and you’ll feel it.”
Meigs also feels that living and working in Victoria is one of the factors that set her art apart. “There’s not a huge contemporary art community here, and I like the sense of delight or freedom that gives me in my studio,” she says. “I just take what I do here and show it in Toronto and people always say, ‘Oh, that’s so fresh!’”
Meigs is only the second UVic scholar to be awarded a Governor General’s Award for Visual Arts, alongside sculptor and now-Professor Emeritus Mowry Baden in 2006. “This award represents ours country’s highest honour in our profession, and publicly recognizes a lifetime of achievement and contribution to this field of research,” says Paul Walde, Chair of the Department of Visual Arts.
With 18 catalogue essays and over 60 articles and reviews, Meigs’ artistic output has been covered in influential journals such as Artforum, Canadian Art, Border Crossings, The Globe & Mail, C Magazine, Parachute and the National Post. Her most recent major local exhibition was The Basement Panoramas at downtown’s Open Space gallery.
“Just when you think you have a handle on how Sandra will next explore psychological or physical space, her passion and focus changes shape and direction,” notes Dr. Lynne Van Luven, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts. “The University of Victoria is fortunate to have an artist of such strong national and international reputation on its faculty.”
Meigs will be presented with a $25,000 cash prize and unique commemorative medallion by His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, at a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on April 8 and will also participate in a special curated exhibit of 2015 winners at the National Gallery of Canada, running April 9 to August 30.
The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts were created in 1999 by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Governor General of Canada. The awards celebrate Canada’s vibrant arts community and recognize remarkable careers in the visual and media arts.
Sandra Meigs. Photo by Michelle Alger
Department of Visual Arts professor and nationally renowned painter Sandra Meigs has been named one of only eight winners in the annual Governor General’s Awards for Visual and Media Arts by the Canada Council for the Arts.
“It’s such an honour to be recognized in this capacity for my career as an artist,” says Meigs. “You get benchmarks of recognition as you go along—a big review in the Globe and Mail, a major Canada Council grant—but this is something very ceremonial, very special. I feel totally thrilled.”
Highly regarded for her expressive, eclectic and interdisciplinary contemporary artworks, Sandra Meigs is best known for large-scale works like The Basement Panoramas and Strange Loop. Primarily working in the mediums of acrylic and oil, she has led a distinguished 35-year career with over 40 solo and 60 group exhibitions in Canada’s most culturally relevant institutions. Her work has been collected by the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Banff Centre, the Canada Council Art Bank and the Musée d’art contemporain. She is currently represented by the Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto.
“You can call it a lifetime achievement award, but in a way I see it as the beginning of a new lifetime,” says Meigs. “Some artists make brilliant work in their last 20 years, so for me it’s less lifetime achievement and more career achievement.”
Director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts Simon Brault praises the 2015 recipients. “This year’s winners are profoundly shaping Canada’s cultural identity. We applaud their innovative and powerful work, which invites us to question the state of our world and our own personal destinies in ways that we never would have imagined.”
Click here to watch a short video about Sandra Meigs’ creative practice (Directed by Ryan Mah and Danny Berish for the Canada Council, it will play at film festivals across Canada throughout the year and will be seen on Air Canada’s in-flight entertainment system starting in May 2015.)
Open Space will be honouring Meigs with a reception from 5 to 8pm Wednesday, March 25, at 510 Fort Street. All are welcome.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1953, Meigs has lived in Canada since 1973. She left the Rhode Island School of Art to study at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she earned her BFA. NSCAD had just become internationally acclaimed as a place of critical stimulation and theoretical discourse, where the methodologies of contemporary art were in the process of being reinvented; the spirit of this rambunctious art school became an essential part of Meigs’ thinking, and contributed to her MA in Philosophy at Dalhousie University in 1980. A former Chair of UVic’s Department of Visual Arts (1997-2002), she continues to bring that critical eye to her classes.
“We have some of the top contemporary artists in the country here and we have very high standards for all our sessional instructors, who are all very good,” she explains about the dynamic learning environment upon which the Visual Arts department is built. “We focus so intensely on studio practice for the students versus doing a lot of theoretical lecturing
. . . we look at everything very carefully, and talk about it in a constructive but critical way—how it’s related to current art context and theoretical ideas of contemporary art. It’s hard for the general public to get that, because you don’t get that unless you’re here, but it’s all very exciting. That’s the great strength of UVic’s Visual Arts program—walk through any of the studios and you’ll feel it.”
A member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Artists who also represented Canada in the Fifth Biennale of Sydney, Meigs has been a professor with Visual Arts since 1993 and feels that working in Victoria is one of the factors that set her work apart. “There’s not a huge contemporary art community here, and I like the sense of delight or freedom that gives me in my studio,” she says. “I take what I do here and show it in Toronto and people always say, ‘Oh, that’s so fresh!’”
Meigs is only the second UVic scholar to be awarded a Governor General’s Award for Visual Arts, alongside sculptor and now-Professor Emeritus Mowry Baden in 2006. She has taught painting, sculpture and foundation courses at Halifax’s Dalhousie University, Toronto’s York University and the Ontario College of Art, and the University of Toronto, Scarborough. She has also been a mentor for generations of artists, among them UVic alumni Patrick Howlett, Althea Thauberger and Marianne Nicolson—all of whom have work in major public collections. Former student Kim Adams also won the Governor General’s Award for Sculpture in 2014.
“This award represents ours country’s highest honour in our profession, and publicly recognizes a lifetime of achievement and contribution to this field of research,” says Paul Walde, Chair of the Department of Visual Arts. “Throughout her career at UVic, Sandra has continued to distinguish herself and the Department through her outstanding work as an artist and professor.”
With 18 catalogue essays and over 60 articles and reviews, Meigs’ artistic output has been covered in influential journals such as Artforum, Canadian Art, Border Crossings, The Globe & Mail, C Magazine, Parachute and the National Post. She has been awarded major grants, is a sought-after member of peer assessment committees, and has advised boards of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, CARFAC and the Canada Council For the Arts. In addition to her studio practice, Meigs writes, researches and occasionally curates. Her most recent major local exhibition was The Basement Panoramas at downtown’s Open Space gallery.
“Just when you think you have a handle on how Sandra will next explore psychological or physical space, her passion and focus changes shape and direction,” notes Dr. Lynne Van Luven, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts. “The University of Victoria is fortunate to have an artist of such strong national and international reputation on its faculty.”
Award nominator Helen Marzolf, Executive Director of Open Space, has long admired Meigs’ work. “With each successive series she surprises, jolts, and transforms how we think about the world. I have always been in awe of her confidence and audacity,” says Marzolf. “Her brilliant philosophical paintings always breathe vernacular air—anyone, no matter what his or her background, is susceptible to them. How fitting, and how exciting, for her to win the GG in Visual and Media Arts. Aren’t we lucky to have Sandra Meigs in our community?”
In response to her exhibit The Newborn in 2001, noted Toronto art writer John Bentley Mays expressed his ongoing astonishment at Meigs’ ability: “There is art and duty and sorrow and surprises and, always, the unceasing wonder—in everything, in fact, catalogued in this remarkable and intelligent installation. Ms. Meigs is a painter who thinks critically about everything—painting and thinking included.”
As Open Space’s Marzolf wrote in her nomination package, “Meigs’ artistic process resolutely follows the barest whiff of imaginative speculation into uncharted intimacies. Meigs wills us into spaces of profound, mischievous curiosity from which there is no escape. Her agnostic, non-transcendent politics offers a quantum expansion of the psychogeographies of Canadian identity.”
Meigs will be presented with a $25,000 cash prize and unique commemorative medallion by His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, at a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on April 8 and will also participate in a special curated exhibit of 2015 winners at the National Gallery of Canada, running April 9 to August 30.
This year’s other Visual and Media Arts Award winners include Louise Déry, Robert Houle, Micah Lexier, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Paul McClure, Rober Racine and Reva Stone.
The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts were created in 1999 by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Governor General of Canada. The awards celebrate Canada’s vibrant arts community and recognize remarkable careers in the visual and media arts.
Photo by Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
Eight veterans of Canada’s visual and media arts world – three women, five men – are this year’s winners of the Governor-General’s Awards for career excellence in the visual and media arts. The names of the winners, each of whom receives $25,000, were announced Tuesday morning by the Ottawa-based Canada Council for the Arts, the awards’ administrator.
Artists from Toronto and Montreal represent the single biggest bloc of winners, with three laureates from each city. The other two are from Victoria and Winnipeg. All the winners, chosen by a nomination-peer jury process, are scheduled to attend a reception April 8 at Rideau Hall in Ottawa hosted by Governor-General David Johnston. Examples of their work are to be presented April 9 through Aug. 30 at the National Gallery in Ottawa. The GGAVMAs have been handed out annually since 2000.
As has been the case from its inception, the laureates reflect the eclectic nature of contemporary art production and related endeavours.
Born in Baltimore, Sandra Meigs (b. 1953) has lived in Canada since 1973 and been based in Victoria for the past 22 years, where she’s a professor of visual arts at the University of Victoria. She’s (mostly) a painter informed by eclectic influences and varied intentions, and her works, “vivid, enigmatic,” are sometimes small, sometimes large. A 2013 mural, Red. 3011 Jackson. (Mortality), for example, spans more than seven metres. Writing in 2001, critic John Bentley Mays observed that Meigs “thinks critically about everything,” including painting and thinking, and he called her art “a psychological and philosophical probe” of age-old topics – “the body, light and darkness, storytelling.”
Sandra Meigs is one of this year's eight winners of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. (The Canadian Press)
B.C. painter Sandra Meigs is among the eight Canadians who received a Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts this morning. On the heels of the honour, Meigs joins guest host Piya Chattopadhyay to discuss her lifetime of artistic achievement and how the creative process helped her cope with the loss of her husband.
Meigs has won many accolades over the course of her 40-year career, but her most recent series, The Basement Panoramas, has been widely praised as her most striking. Her work has been shown widely in Canada, including at the National Gallery in Ottawa.
"You have to actually walk with the work," she says of her sprawling pieces, adding that mindful walking helped her through the grieving process. "Everything becomes heightened in that state of slowing down and feeling your senses."
WATCH: Canada Council's short film about Sandra Meigs
Sandra Meigs has won a 2015 Governor General's Award for Visual and Media Arts for her contributions to Canadian culture. Photograph by BRUCE STOTESBURY, Times Colonist
A life spent painting, teaching and sharing the creative process has put Victoria’s Sandra Meigs in special company.
The 61-year-old Meigs has been named one of eight winners of the 2015 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. She is the lone winner from B.C.
“They look for people accomplished in the profession over their career,” Meigs said of the selection committee. “It’s an incredible honour, it really is, because I’ve been a professional for 40 years if you go back to my first show.”
Meigs is also a respected teacher, having spent the past 21 years with the University of Victoria’s visual-arts department.
The other winners are: Louise Déry, curator, Montreal (Outstanding Contribution Award); Robert Houle, visual artist, Toronto; Micah Lexier, visual artist, Toronto; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, media artist, Montreal; Paul McClure, jewelry artist, Toronto (Saidye Bronfman Award); Rober Racine, visual artist, writer and composer, Montreal; Reva Stone, new media artist, Winnipeg.
“This year’s winners are profoundly shaping Canada’s cultural identity,” said Simon Brault, director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts. “We applaud their innovative and powerful work, which invites us to question the state of our world and our own personal destinies in ways that we never would have imagined.”
The awards, given annually, are funded and administered by the council; this year is the 15th anniversary of the awards. Winners receive a $25,000 cash prize and will be honoured at a ceremony April 9 with Governor General David Johnston at Ottawa’s Rideau Hall.
Along with that, their work will be shown at the National Gallery of Canada from April 9 to Aug. 30 and each is the subject of a specially made short film. “That was my first starring role,” Meigs said with a smile. “It’s really quite beautiful, the work on my film.”
She noted that she has benefited through the years from funding grants given by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Her nomination came from Helen Marzolf of Victoria’s Open Space Gallery, where Meigs’ work has been shown.
Asked how people explain her style, Meigs said it certainly isn’t cut-and-dried — fitting, perhaps, considering her paintings can range from an average size you can hold in your hand to an expansive piece that runs the length of a wall.
“They describe me as someone who’s constantly surprising them,” Meigs said. “I don’t have a formal style that I’ve stuck to all these years. I do integrate narrative content into my painting, in a way that is quite unique.”
The narrative can simply be a story on a plaque accompanying the painting, or words and phrases incorporated into the painting itself.
“The Art Gallery of Ontario has one of my works in their collection called the Newborn,” Meigs said. “It has 12 individual paintings but each painting has a verse to a story.”
Just as her style isn’t set, so it is with her choice of medium. Different types of paint are good for different things, Meigs explained.
“I shift back and forth, depending,” she said. “Oil is better for some types of forms because it dries slowly and acrylic is better for others if you want faster work.”
One constant is the huge benefits that come from spending time as an educator, Meigs said.
“I’m constantly inspired by young people. Also, my colleagues are all very dedicated and the university supports research in a really strong way.”
Her success can be seen in the sheer number of exhibitions that have featured her work across the country. There have been close to 100 in Canada, as well as others in Europe and Australia.
She is currently represented by the Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto.
Having her work distributed so widely is “amazing,” Meigs said.
“And that’s what this award kind of brings home to me: ‘Wow, I have done all that stuff.’ This makes me reflect on my career in a great way.”
The movies made of the award recipients will be shown on Air Canada’s in-flight entertainment system beginning in May, and can also be seen on the websites for the Canada Council (canadacouncil.ca) and the Independent Media Arts Alliance (imaa.ca).
2015 winner, Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts
Directed by Ryan Mah and Danny Berish
Co-production of the Canada Council for the Arts and Black Rhino Creative
Presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance
For more information, visit: ggavma.canadacouncil.ca
Sandra Meigs is an iconic artist who reshaped the philosophical terrain of painting in an era that maligned painting. Pulling from philosophical texts, theory, popular culture, music and poetry, Meigs imbues her art with disarming, strategic and, at times, mordant humour. She is an astute risk taker, whose work is led by a feral imagination, resolutely following the barest whiff of imaginative trails into uncharted intimacies.
Meigs’ searching expressionism explores deeply embedded transgressive urges, recurrent fears, and elusive anxieties. She pushes paintings’ limits, both physically — when she shifts painting into the realm of sculpture — and conceptually, as she packs philosophy into enigmatic imagery. She delights in complicating what appears to be obvious. Profound, mischievous, agnostic and rebellious, Sandra Meigs’ art offers a quantum expansion of the psychogeographies of Canadian identity.
– Helen Marzolf (nominator), Open Space