Artist Prize
Mandate
The Artist Grant is given annually to a Toronto emerging artist who shows exceptional talent.
2008 Yam Lau
Yam Lau’s creative work explores new expressions and qualities of space and image. His recent work combines video and computer-generated animation to re-create familiar spaces and images in multiple dimensions and perspectives. He has exhibited in Toronto’s Contact photography festival. Yam is also actively involved in the local community, using his car as an on-going mobile project space, designed to solicit community participation. He is currently a professor of painting in Department of Fine Arts at York University.
2007 Karen Henderson
Karen Henderson was born in Scotland and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1986 from the Camberwell School of Art in London and later received a Master of Fine Art at the University of Victoria. She has been living and working in Toronto since 1988.
Karen produces photographic, film, video, and installation work. Her pieces have been shown in solo and group shows at the Power Plant, at the Loggia Gallery @ the Koffler Centre for the Arts, at the University of Buffalo Art Gallery and the Optica Centre for Contemporary Arts in Montreal. The AGO also showed Karen’s work in 1999 as part of the Present Tense series and her work entitled Ramp-Wall is the final installation of the AGO’s Wallworks series in 2007.
2006 Anitra Hamilton
Anitra has been practicing her art in Toronto for 15 years. Her work is object-based and most of her pieces deal with the theme of war. Her work has been shown in Canada and abroad including the 8th Havana Biennale, the Albright-Knox Gallery and The Shape of Colour exhibition at the AGO. Anitra is also the director of Satchel Gallery which is a gallery located in her bright yellow shoulder bag. She promotes the work of other artists, by carrying a piece of one artist in her bag for one month, while she attends openings, lectures and other art related events. She has upcoming projects in the works for BizArt Gallery in Shanghai and is planning a trip to Berlin in the fall of 2006 to realize projects in that city.
2005 Vessna Perunovich
Vessna is a visual artist who works in a variety of media ranging from sculpture and painting to video installation and performance. Vessna's work explores many themes including exile, memory and male/female relationships. She seeks ways to understand the tension between conflicted states of mind and being. Vessna is a MFA graduate of the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia and immigrated to Toronto in 1988.
2004 Mark Bell
Painter Mark Bell graduated in 1989 from the Ontario College of Art and Design. He is a founding member of the artist collective Painting Disorders. Mark is known for his laborious black-on-white paintings based on archival photography. His work was shown in the Present Tense Exhibition at the AGO in 2003, where he showed a daily watercolour series in which he selected and copied a photo from a morning paper.
2003 Gwen MacGregor
Gwen is an artist working in installations and video. Her art reflects her close observations of time and how its passage shapes small dramas. In 1998 her work was featured in a solo exhibition at the South Alberta Art Gallery and in 2001 was part of the Present Tense Exhibition at the AGO. MacGregor's work has been shown in many group exhibitions across Canada and in Mexico, London, Prague, Venice, Shanghai and Los Angeles. In 2004, she received the Canada Council New York Studio award.
2002 John Dickson
John obtained his MFA from York University in 1989. A founding member of 'Nethermind' he has shown in all of their exhibitions from 1991 to 1995. He has had exhibitions at the Koffler Gallery, Mercer Union, Robert Birch and Garnet Press in Toronto, as well as Plug In in Winnipeg and Optica in Montreal. Internationally, he has shown in the Czech Republic, Copenhagen, and in 2005, at the Canadian Embassy in Paris.
2001 Jay Wilson
Jay is a multi-disciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture and video. He was Chair of the Mercer Union board. He has collaborated with Gwen MacGregor and Derek Sullivan. Jay has been a member of many group shows including the Logo Show part of the 2000 AGO Present Tense, Instant Coffee; Urban Disco Trailer. He has received a number of awards and grants including the Ontario Arts Council Grant, Emerging Artist in 1999, 2000 and 2001.
2001 Janet Cardiff and George Bures-Miller
A first award was given to Janet Cardiff and George Bures-Miller who collaborated in the creation of a multi media work to represent Canada at the 49th Venice Biennale. Their installation of video and recorded sound, “Paradise Institute”, won the prestigious “La Biennale di Venezia Special Award".