Ottawa, September 8, 2010 – Dancer Randy Joynt, multidisciplinary artist Kristen Fahrig, filmmaker Samer Najari, composer Analia Llugdar, playwright Dominick Parenteau-Lebeuf, visual artist Tricia Middleton and writer Philippe Gaulin are the winners of the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Awards administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.
The annual awards, worth $15,000 each, recognize outstanding mid-career artists in the seven disciplines funded by the Canada Council: dance, integrated arts, media arts, music, theatre, visual arts and writing and publishing. The prizes were created using funds from a generous bequest made by the late Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton to the Canada Council. The winners are chosen from the pool of successful applicants from the Grants to Professional Artists programs during the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Download images of the winners and their works.
Randy Joynt – Dance
Randy Joynt founded Winnipeg's TRIP dance company in 1997 with partner Karen Kuzak and they managed the company until June 2010. His role in the organization included performing, teaching, producing and administrating. His career as a dancer spanned 20 years and includes work with Contemporary Dancers (Winnipeg), Le Groupe de la Place Royale (Ottawa), O Vertigo Danse (Montreal) and a number of independent choreographers. He has performed throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
For over a decade, Mr. Joynt has been one of Winnipeg's primary teachers of contemporary dance technique. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (theatre/dance) from the University of Winnipeg and is a graduate of the School of Contemporary Dancer's Professional Program. He is a former member of the Manitoba Arts Council's advisory committee and is currently a Board Director of the Canadian Dance Assembly and the Winnipeg Arts Council. Mr. Joynt is the Executive Director of the Winnipeg cultural institution Artspace Inc., where he is developing an umbrella arts management service.
Kristen Fahrig – Integrated Arts
Ottawa-born Kristen Fahrig is a professional sculptor, educator and cultural animator, working primarily in Toronto. In 2008, she created the finale for Harbourfront Centre's water festival Luminat'eau: Carnival H2O. She designed a 14-foot sculpture of a woman gazing out over the lake, her arms outstretched, holding a vessel of water. This figure was the centrepiece of an integrated art performance that was then translated into a small urban park setting (MacGregor Park) where Ms. Fahrig has been artist-in-residence since 2004.
Ms. Fahrig is currently creating a series of figurative sculptures in forged steel and cast bronze. Permanent installations of her work can be found in four urban Toronto parks. Profoundly influenced by many years in theatre costume design, she has also explored the idea of wearable art. Her creations cover a broad cultural and thematic range from environmental statement to the seduction of technology as it embraces the human body.
Samer Najari – Media Arts
Samer Najari, the son of a Syrian father and Lebanese mother, was born in Moscow in 1976. Shortly after commencing studies in architecture in 1994 at the University of Damascus, he immigrated to Montreal with his family. Since then, he has obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film production from Concordia University (2001) and completed a residency at Le Studio National des Arts Contemporains, Le Fresnoy in France (2001-03).
During his residency, Mr. Najari directed two films that have been screened and praised internationally, as well as an installation (Buffer Zone) via the web. On his return to Canada he directed Before the Wind Blows (2006) and Snow Hides the Shade of Fig Trees (2009). He has presented his work in a number of international festivals and won several awards.
Analia Llugdar – Music
Analia Llugdar is a Canadian/Argentinian composer who is currently based in Montreal. She has won several notable competitions, including first prize in the chamber music category of the CBC Radio National Competition for Young Composers, the Jeunesses Musicales du Canada Award, the Contemporary Music Québec-Flandres Prize (2007), the 2008 Jules Léger Prize for new chamber music and the Prix Opus composer of the year from the Conseil québécois de la musique for 2008-09.
Ms. Llugdar earned a Bachelor of Music in piano performance from the National University of Cordoba, Argentina, and a Ph.D. in Music in composition from the University of Montreal where she studied with José Evangelista and Denis Gougeon. Her music has been performed in several festivals including Montréal Nouvelle Musique, Biennale Musique en Scène de Lyon, Journées Grame, Royaumont, Huddersfield, Transit, ISCM, Presence China concerts at Shanghai, MANCA and Cervantino. Ms. Llugdar is a member of the Canadian Music Centre, Canadian League of Composers and of the artistic committee of the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec.
Dominick Parenteau-Lebeuf – Theatre
Dominick Parenteau-Lebeuf is a playwright and screenwriter. She has a degree in dramatic writing from the National Theatre School of Canada and is the author of some 15 plays filled with poetry, humour and tragedy. Her play Poème pour une nuit d'anniversaire won the 1995 Cartes Blanches aux auteurs prize at the Théâtre Ouvert (Paris), where Belgian publisher Émile Lansman took her under his wing. She subsequently won acclaim in Quebec with Dévoilement devant notaire, which received the Prix Gratien-Gélinas (1998), and L'autoroute, a children's play created by Le Carrousel in 1999.
These early successes were followed by 10 years of multiple productions, including Portrait chinois d'une imposteure, La petite scrap and Filles de guerres lasses, and by staged readings and writing residencies in Canada, Europe and the United States that resulted in translations of her work into German, English, Bulgarian and Italian. Parenteau-Lebeuf is currently writer-in-residence with Théâtre Bluff, creators of youth theatre, where she is writing a play entitled La demoiselle en blanc. Originally from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu (Quebec), she now lives in Montreal.
Tricia Middleton – Visual Arts
Tricia Middleton holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design and a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University. Favouring the format of sculptural installation, her work is profoundly concerned with the materiality of the world—how materials are located in time, and how both their substance and their meaning changes within time. These temporary installations will often use (and reuse) all of the materials of her studio, even its dust and debris. In this way, her experiments seek to hybridize historical and contemporary material culture, detailing the migrations of form and meaning over time.
Ms. Middleton's solo exhibitions include Dark Souls at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2009) and Midnight Gallery Rambles at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2009). Recent group exhibitions include Nothing to Declare: Recent Sculpture from Canada at the Power Plant in Toronto (2010), the inaugural Quebec Triennial at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2008) and Dé-con-structions at the National Gallery of Canada (2007). Originally from Vancouver, Ms. Middleton lives and works in Montreal.
Philippe Gaulin – Writing and Publishing
Philippe Gaulin has been a clinical psychoanalyst for more than 20 years. A course lecturer at Université de Sherbrooke (1985 – 2001), he has a graduate degree in philosophy and clinical psychopathology. From 1990 to 2003 he held various positions in the field of health and clinical, epidemiological and psychosocial research. In November 2003, Les Éditions Triptyque published his first book, Le culte technomédical : approche psychanalytique (Le prix à payer pour que le verbe se fasse chair), followed in March 2006 by Traiter, 100 ans après la psychanalyse de Freud, dans une société technomédicale.
In spring 2010, Éditions Liber published the full text of one of his lectures, Freud et la philosophies, in a publication entitled La mort, Séminaire 1985-1988 (which grouped the seminars of François Péraldi). In the fall of 2010, Mr. Gaulin will publish his third work with Les Éditions Triptyque, Freud et l'affaire de l'inconscient : L'espace subjectif dans la société technomédicale et virtuelle – Psychanalyse du virtuel.
General information
In addition to its principal role of promoting and fostering the arts, the Canada Council for the Arts administers and awards many prizes and fellowships in the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural and health sciences, engineering, and arts management. These prizes and fellowships recognize the achievements of outstanding Canadian artists, scholars, and administrators. The Canada Council is committed to raising public awareness and celebrating these exceptional people and organizations on both a national and international level.
Find a complete listing of these awards.
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