Rodney Graham CM

2011 Audain Prize for the Visual Arts

Rodney Graham is an internationally acclaimed conceptual artist often associated with the Vancouver School. Known for captivating photographs, his diverse multimedia works employ circular narratives and allusions to cultural history and philosophy.

Rodney Graham was born in 1949 in Abbotsford, British Columbia. He attended the University of British Columbia with the intention to study writing and literature. However, after taking a course in modern art with fellow Vancouver-based artist Ian Wallace, he decided to study art history instead.

In Camera Obscura (1979), one of Rodney Graham’s earliest works, he built an optical device popular with Romantic artists that inverted and projected images. It was installed in a shed near his family’s farm in Abbotsford, British Columbia. The observer entered the shed and is confronted with an inverted image of a tree, an imagery which recurred throughout his career. Camera Obscura (1979) encourages viewers to consider that much of how we experience nature and the Canadian landscape is deliberate and mediated rather than natural.

In the 1990s, Rodney Graham started producing film. His first video, Halcion Sleep (1994), was shot in grainy black and white, nostalgic of conceptual art films from the 1970s. In 1997 he created Vexation Island for the 47th Venice Biennale. Shot in bright colours, Vexation Island (1997) was reminiscent of classic Hollywood Films. Vexation Island (1997) was a turning point for Rodney Graham, after which he began exploring different film genres.

In addition to the 47th Venice Biennale (1997), Rodney Graham has also been honoured with the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2004), the Kurt Schwitters-Preis (2006) and the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts (2011). In 2016 he was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Rodney Graham continues to live and work in Vancouver, British Columbia. His public art piece Aerodynamic Forms in Space (installed 2010) can be found at the Georgia Street entrance of Stanley Park. Rodney Graham’s work can be viewed as part of the permanent collection at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, British Columbia.