A look back at 50 years of Canadian artists at the Venice Biennale
CBC Archives | Posted: April 21, 2022 7:45 PM | Last Updated: April 21, 2022
Watch these archival videos of some of Canada's best known artists exhibiting at Venice
The Venice Biennale, a biennial international art exhibition in the Italian city of canals, has returned in 2022 after a three-year hiatus. This year, Canada will be represented by Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist Stan Douglas.
But there's a long history of Canadian artists at "the god of international art exhibitions," as CBC arts correspondent Laurie Brown called it in 2001.
These five profiles from the CBC archives show the range of artists — from painter Alex Colville to visual artist Shary Boyle — who have put Canadian art on the world stage in Venice.
Alex Colville, 1966
When painter Alex Colville exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1966, he was one of three Canadian artists showing their work there, joining sculptor Sorel Etrog and painter Yves Gaucher.
A year later, the CBC-TV biography series Telescope profiled Colville. In the above segment, we see a series of 1967 Centennial coins bearing his wildlife designs, and Colville notes his attraction to the idea of creating something for the purses and pockets of the public.
"Paintings are, in a sense, private works of art," he said. "I actually prefer a painting of mine to go into a private collection rather than a public one ... Some person or small group of persons actually live with the painting [and] it becomes part of their life."
Michael Snow, 1970
In 1969, the Globe and Mail described artist Michael Snow as a "New York artist and filmmaker" but noted he had been chosen to represent Canada at the following year's Venice Biennale.
According to host Ken Cavanagh, who introduced director Don Owen's profile of Snow on CBC-TV's Telescope, as seen above in its entirety, it was the first time a single artist had held the honour.
"Venice is a museum ... a relic of a great past," said Snow. "It's still a living city, and it's still living beautifully, but basically what you're in is a frame."
General Idea, 1980
The Toronto-based collective General Idea went to the Venice Biennale with their work in 1980, a year when Canada was represented solely by video art.
But there was more to General Idea than video art, as a 1984 profile on CBC's The Journal showed. Visitors to their exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery could expect to see the trio's "vision of mass media manipulation" and exploitation of common images in gowns, magazines and installations.
The collective's three members — AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal — spoke to CBC.
"We wanted to be rich, we wanted to be famous, we wanted to be glamorous. We wanted to be artists," said Bronson. "And we knew that if we were famous, if we were glamorous, we could say, 'We are artists,' and we would be."
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, 2001
No matter how you pronounced it — bee-en-AH-lay or bee-en-AL — the Venice Biennale was "the god of international art exhibitions," said host Laurie Brown on CBC's On the Arts in 2001. Video artist Stephen Lawson brought viewers a glimpse into that year's Canadian pavilion.
"This year, there's one work of art everyone is talking about," he said. That work was The Paradise Institute, an immersive experience by Alberta couple Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.
The pair won a prize at the Biennale from the international jury, said Lawson.
"It's entertaining," said Bures Miller. "I think this is a piece [of art] that's quite accessible to an audience that isn't a sophisticated art audience as well."
Shary Boyle, 2013
Shary Boyle's entry at the Venice Biennale in 2013 could be compared to a "turn-of-the-century travelling curiosity show," said the Globe and Mail at the time. The Toronto Star said Boyle's entry included an "enormous plaster sculpture" of a mermaid in a pale cave. Projectors periodically switched on to transform it to "a hectic collage of colour and image."
But in 2009, CBC reporter Deana Sumanac had described Boyle's work, which included sculpture, drawing and live performance art set to music, as "bold, disturbing, at times even grotesque." When Sumanac visited Boyle in her Toronto studio for CBC News, the artist talked about what she tried to achieve with her work.
"I ... always recognize this massive lack, or dearth, of honest images or stories from [a] female perspective," Boyle said.