Professor Emeritus Suzy Lake wins the Governor General’s Award

The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts were created in 1999 by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Governor General of Canada. Over the past 16 years, the awards have celebrated Canada’s vibrant arts community and recognized remarkable careers in the visual and media arts.

"Suzy Lake has been examining and critiquing ideals of the body, gender and identity since the late 1960s. In her photographs, videos and performances, (she) has been a prescient image-maker – most often using herself as a model – who continues to interrogate ideas of beauty, aging and the self. Her work is rooted in the artistic experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s; second wave feminism and the politics of representation; and the language of conceptual art.

Indeed Lake’s contributions also seem all the more poignant in light of today’s contemporary art practices which have infused new vigour into feminist work, relational/social practices and material investigations of the medium of photography."

Nominators Sophie Hackett and Georgiana Uhlyarik, associate curators, Art Gallery of Ontario

http://ggavma.canadacouncil.ca/archive/2016/winners/suzy-lake