B.C. artists, Toronto curator win Hnatyshyn art awards

B.C. installation artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, a husband and wife team who work in collaboration, have won the 2008 Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award.

The Hnatyshyn Foundation, named after former governor general Ray Hnatyshyn, annually presents a $25,000 prize for achievement by a Canadian artist and a $15,000 prize to a Canadian curator.

The winning curator is Barbara Fischer of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at University of Toronto, who will curate the official Canadian entry in the 2009 Venice Biennale of Art.

Cardiff and Miller have a studio in Berlin and another in Grindrod, in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley and they create in both places.

They met in art school and have been collaborating in creating art, and influencing each other in solo works, since the 1980s.

In their installations, Cardiff and Miller create visual art that goes well beyond the visual, seeking to engage all the senses.

"We really like narrative storytelling, we love having an effect on people, to get them emotionally engaged," said Miller in an interview with CBC News.

Many of their installations involve sophisticated use of sound, including Cardiff's Forty-Part Motet, which won the Millennium Prize in 2000 and was exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada.

The installation has 40 speakers around a room, each playing sound from a different voice as a choir sings a 11-minute piece of music.

"People go up to individual speakers and they hear what the singers would hear," Cardiff said. "Or they stand in the middle of the room and get the full effect of the voices combined."

Cardiff, who was born in Brussels, Ont., admits she is fascinated with the "physicality of sound."

She likes to create the experience of sound moving around a room in different combinations. Her newest work is a theatrical piece in which she narrates a dream sequence with surreal sound.

"We're hybrid artists," she said. "We incorporate aspects of film and theatre and the phenomenon of senses and sound. I love to manipulate how the senses understand our work."

Miller, who came from Vegreville, Alta.,  said he is interested in how "audiences allow filmmakers to suspend their disbelief and create an alternative sense of reality."

Their 2001 work The Paradise Institute, which won a special award at the Venice Biennale, is a reproduction of a 1940s movie theatre, with the scale slightly off.

A truncated version of a 1940s style black and white movie plays on the screen, while viewers hear the sounds of an old-time theatre — motion in the aisles, popcorn being eaten, whispering as well as the soundtrack — on headphones mounted on the seats.

Cardiff and Miller have exhibited around the world, including Germany and London.

The jury for the Hnatyshyn prize said their work has "contributed enormously to the evolution of contemporary art."

Their unique use of binaural "surround sound and haunting music creates enchanting immersive experiences. Cardiff and Miller draw upon boundless numbers of disciplines to wear together stories that confront the mysteries of the heart, the soul and the working of the human mind," the jury said.

The jury praised Fischer for the deep understanding of artists and their work that underlies her curatorial process.

"Barbara knows her community profoundly, which provides her with advance knowledge of the artistic questions that inspire that community and which, in turn, sustains the courage of her commitments," the jury said.

Fischer is a writer, lecturer and executive director of the Barnicke Gallery. She has worked as curator on solo exhibitions of contemporary Canadian artists such as John Greyson, Tanya Mars, Stan Douglas and Fastwurms as well as numerous group exhibitions.

She will curate the Canadian exhibition at the 2009 Venice Biennale featuring work by Mark Lewis, a Hamilton, Ont.-born photographer and filmmaker who also won the Gershon Iskowitz prize this year.