Ottawa, October 18, 2006 - Interdisciplinary artist Robin Brass, media artist Pascale Ferland, dancer Santee Smith, author Peter Knudtson, jazz musician and composer Brad Turner, playwright Larry Tremblay, and visual artist Ron Terada are the 2006 winners of the Canada Council for the Arts' Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Awards.
The annual awards, worth $15,000 each, recognize outstanding mid-career artists in the seven disciplines funded by the Canada Council: music, theatre, dance, visual arts, media arts, writing and publishing and interdisciplinary arts. The Prizes were created using funds from a generous bequest made by the late Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton to the Canada Council.
The seven Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award recipients were chosen through a process which involved nominations by the Grants to Professional Artists peer assessment committees during the 2005-2006 fiscal year. The winning candidates are considered the most outstanding mid-career artists of those nominated.
Images of the winners can be downloaded from the Canada Council image gallery.
Robin Brass - Interdisciplinary arts
Robin Brass is an interdisciplinary artist originally from the Regina/Qu'Appelle region of southern Saskatchewan. She has studied at York University and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Indigenous Fine Arts, First Nations University of Canada. Ms. Brass is a co-founder of Sakewewak Artists' Collective as well as the co-founder and former co-artistic director of Sakewewak's Distinguished Storytellers Series.
She has produced works including Tawihken Kakike-Kakike (making space over and over, again and again) Performance Creation Canada symposium in Regina (2005); Root of Love, for the exhibition Constitution, Godfrey Dean Art Gallery (2005); Mining Dog, Neutral Ground (2000). She also contributed to various group exhibits and collaborations including Pelican Nocturne (2005), Robin Poitras, artistic director; Pooling Time: Beyond Performance, PAVED Arts with TRIBE (2003); Nomadic Recall (1999) & Backtracking: The New Museum (1998), Edward Poitras, artistic director; The House of Sonya, Red Tattoo Theatre (1997), Floyd Favel Starr, director; MexterminatorII (1997), collaboration with Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Roberto Sifuentes.
In the fall of 1999 Ms. Brass took a teaching position with the First Nations University of Canada, teaching Native Art History on several Saskatchewan reserves. She moved to northern Saskatchewan in 2000 where she has most recently created new work based upon the intimate relationships between Healers (plants) and Patients (humans), as well as delving deeper into new performance work based in the Saulteaux/Anishinabe languages, further pursuing her true love of Indigenous language and questions of orature (oral literature) and translation.
Pascale Ferland - Media arts
Pascale Ferland was born in Joliette, Quebec. In 1995, she completed her visual arts training at the Université du Québec à Montréal. After producing a few experimental short films, she turned to documentaries, a genre she has been working in since 1999. In 2003, she made her first feature-length film, L'Immortalité en fin de compte, a finalist for the Jutra Award for best documentary and the second film in a series about the obsession to create. On the same theme, L'Arbre aux branches coupées (2005) was hailed by critics and presented in several national and international festivals. She is currently beginning work on a new documentary about René Bail, one of the first independent filmmakers in Quebec. In addition to her creative work, Pascale Ferland is devoted to the cause of independent film and in 2005 she was the co-founder and administrator of Les Films du 3 mars, a film distribution association.
Santee Smith - Dance
Santee Smith is a member of the Mohawk Nation, Turtle Clan and resides in Six Nations, Ontario. She is the founding Artistic Director and choreographer for Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, an innovative Aboriginal dance company. Ms. Smith attended the National Ballet School from 1982 to 1988 and expanded her knowledge of movement by completing a degree in Kinesiology at McMaster University and a Masters Degree in Dance at York University.
In 1996, she began creating her own choreography and developing a movement style that reflects who she is as an artist. Her major choreographic works include critically acclaimed, Kaha:wi (2004) and Here On Earth (2005). She is committed to sharing stories from her culture and exploring how dance can touch the soul through transformation, communication and meaningful movement. Under her direction, Kaha:wi Dance Theatre established Canada's inaugural Aboriginal dance festival, Living Ritual. Ms. Smith is creating new works such as A Story Before Time..., A Constellation of Bones and Duet, Untitled. She is embarking on the North American tour of Here On Earth.
Peter Knudtson - Writing
Peter Knudtson is a Vancouver-based nature writer who has written on topics ranging from molecular genetics and natural history to anthropology, ecology, and ethics. Born and educated in the United States, Mr. Knudtson holds a master's degree in biology from California State University, where he carried out field studies on the behavior and ecology of seals. He has a B.A. in premedical zoology from the University of California and carried out graduate studies at the University of North Carolina and the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley.
After stints as a wildlife biologist and teacher in Alaska, Mr. Knudtson immigrated to Vancouver in 1983. There, teaming up with renowned science broadcaster David Suzuki, he later researched and wrote two Canadian non-fiction best sellers. Genethics (1989) examines ethical issues arising from new recombinant-DNA technologies. Wisdom of the Elders (1992) explores parallels between scientific and Native views on nature. His other works include The Wintun Indians of California (1977), A Mirror to Nature (1991), Orca (1996), and The World of the Walrus (1998). With a Canada Council grant, Mr. Knudtson is currently exploring the elusive bond between humans and animals through the lens of Native mythology.
Brad Turner - Music
Trumpeter, pianist, drummer and composer Brad Turner, of Vancouver, is one of Canada's most prominent and prolific jazz artists. Mr. Turner has performed and/or recorded with such artists as Joe Lovano, Kenny Wheeler, Michael Moore, Renee Rosnes, Achim Kaufmann, John Scofield, Ingrid Jensen, Dylan van der Schyff, Mike Murley, Mark Helias, Charles McPherson and Gary Bartz. Mr. Turner's groups have opened for McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, Wayne Shorter, Clarke Terry and Diana Krall.
As a leader, he has released five albums, four with his quartet, the most recent being What Is (2005) and Question the Answer (2004) recorded with his piano trio and nominated for a 2005 Canadian Urban Music Award as well as a 2006 Canadian Indie Music Award. In 1997 and 1998 Mr. Turner won a Juno Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album recognizing his work in the internationally established electric jazz group Metalwood. Mr. Turner received many national jazz awards including Jazz Trumpeter of the Year (1999), Jazz Composer of the Year (2000 and 2002) and Musician of the Year (2005).
Larry Tremblay - Theatre
Larry Tremblay was born in Chicoutimi. He is a writer, director, actor and specialist in kathakali, a form of danced theatre. He has published twenty books (plays, poetry, nonfiction, short stories and a novel). He is one of Quebec's most frequently produced and translated playwrights around the world. His many plays (Le Déclic du destin, Leçon d'anatomie, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi, Les Mains bleues, Téléroman, Ogre, Le Ventriloque) have been performed in more than ten countries. Recent works include A Chair in Love (opera libretto), and the plays L'Histoire d'un cur and La Hache-which he also directed at the Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal. He has twice been a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Awards.
Leméac published Larry Tremblay's novel Le Mangeur de bicyclette in 2002 to unanimous critical acclaim. In 2006, his collection of short stories, Piercing, was published by Gallimard. He is a professor at the École supérieure de théâtre at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where he teaches performance and writing.
Ron Terada - Visual Art
Visual artist Ron Terada was born in Vancouver, where he still lives and works. Mr. Terada studied at the Emily Carr College of Art & Design from 1987 to 1991. Recent one-person exhibitions include Stay Away From Lonely Places at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK (2006) and You Have Left the American Sector at the Art Gallery of Windsor (2005). Recent group exhibitions include The Show Will Be Open When the Show Will Be Closed at Store Gallery, London UK and at the Kadist Foundation, Paris (both 2006), Intertidal at Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium (2005) and General Ideas: Rethinking Conceptual Art 1990-2005, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2005).
In 2004, Mr. Terada won the VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation and received a Canada Council grant for a residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York. His works can be found in the collection of the National Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Mr. Terada is represented by the Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver. He is participating in the 6th Shanghai Biennale, which runs until November 5, 2006.
General information
The Canada Council for the Arts, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2007, is a national arm's-length agency created by an Act of Parliament in 1957. In addition to its principal role of promoting and fostering the arts in Canada, the Canada Council administers and awards prizes and fellowships to over 100 artists and scholars annually in the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural and health sciences, and engineering. Among these are the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts, the Governor General's Literary Awards, the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts, the York Wilson Endowment Award, the Prix de Rome in Architecture and the Killam Prizes.
For more information about these awards, including nomination procedures, contact Janet Riedel Pigott, Acting Director of Endowments and Prizes, at 613-566-4414 or 1-800-263-5588, ext. 5041 or Danielle Sarault, Acting Endowments and Prizes Officer, at 613-566-4414 or 1-800-263-5588, ext. 4116.
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