Three Vancouver artists among the 2023 winners of Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts
Nettie Wild, Germaine Koh, and Shannon Walsh honoured by Canada Council for the Arts
Director Nettie Wild in the mountains of B.C. Photo by Robin Lupita Bain
CANADA COUNCIL FOR the Arts today revealed the 2023 winners of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts (GGArts).
Three Vancouver artists are among the six individuals from across the country who are receiving Artistic Achievement Awards: visual artist and curator Germaine Koh; documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild; and filmmaker-writer Shannon Walsh.
Wild, who founded Canada Wild Productions, is best known for FIX: The Story of an Addicted City (2002), A PLACE CALLED CHIAPAS (1998), BLOCKADE (1993) and A RUSTLING OF LEAVES: Inside the Philippine Revolution (1998) Her latest projects explore new forms of storytelling: INSIDE STORIES (2011) is a multi-platform web experience; BEVEL UP (2007) is an interactive DVD; and IN PROFILE: Deepa Mehta (2012) uses split screen to tell its story Uninterrupted, currently in development, is an installation using digital mapping to project documentary footage of the Adams’ River Sockeye run onto the Cambie Street bridge spanning Burrard Inlet .
Koh’s work adapts everyday objects to create situations that look at the significance of familiar actions and common spaces and that encourage connections between people, technology, and natural systems. Her current projects include Home Made Home, an initiative to build and advocate for alternative forms of housing, and League, a participatory project using play as a form of creative practice. Her work has been exhibited at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Para/Site Art Space, Frankfurter Kunstverein, The Power Plant, The British Museum, Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, Art Gallery of Ontario, among other places; she has also participated in the Liverpool, Sydney and Montreal biennials. She has received the Shadbolt Foundation VIVA Award and been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award.
Shannon Walsh.
Walsh has written and directed five feature documentaries on topics ranging from labour rights to grief to climate change. Her work is known for emphasizing marginalized voices and stories on the frontlines of vital contemporary issues. Her films have played in over 100 film festivals globally and screened in museum spaces, including the Venice Biennale and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. As a writer, she has published in a range of research areas looking at inequality, social justice and visual methods, largely focused on South Africa, where she has often lived and worked. Walsh teaches film as an associate professor at UBC, and is a research associate at the South African Research Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. She was a Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies from 2017 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2020.
Also receiving Artistic Achievement Awards are Montreal’s Evergon, an eroticist working in lens-based art; Mulmur Ontario’s FASTWÜRMS; and Tim Whiten, a Toronto-based image maker and creator of cultural objects. 2023 GGArts Winners
The Saidye Bronfman Award, Canada’s most prestigious distinction in fine crafts, goes to Winnipeg visual artist Grace Nickel.
David Garneau, visual artist, curator, and critical art writer in Regina, receives the Outstanding Contribution Award.
Each of the winners, chosen by a peer assessment committee, will receive a $25,000 prize and a bronze medallion. The National Gallery of Canada will present an exhibition to showcase the work of the 2023 GGArts winners. In addition, artistic video portraits of the winners have been created by professional filmmakers.
The Polygon Gallery executive director Reid Shier and Vancouver glass artist Naoko Takenouchi are among the members of the 2023 peer assessment committee.
“Artistic careers are rarely very linear or predictable,” Simon Brault, director and CEO of Canada Council for the Arts says in a release. “Art invites us to remain open to the unexpected, to the mysterious and to discovery. Every year, I am delighted to participate in celebrating visual, media and craft artists whose careers shape our imaginations and leave indelible marks on our lives and on our fate as a society. This year’s award-winning artists have influenced our views, perceptions and experience of what Canada is and, more importantly, what it can become, with a growing emphasis on sharing artistic creation in all its diversity and boldness.”
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