Nationality Canadian Known for Sculpture, photography | Name Liz Magor Role Visual artist | |
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Born 1948 (age 66–67) Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Alma mater University of British Columbia Books How to Avoid the Future Tense, Seventeen Books | ||
Conversation between kelly lycan and liz magor
Liz Magor (born 1948 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is an award winning senior Canadian visual artist. She is well known for her sculptures that address themes of history, shelter and survival through objects that reference still life, domesticity and wildlife. She often re-purposes domestic objects such as blankets and is known for using mold making techniques. She had a career as a respected educator at the Ontario College of Art and Design before moving to Vancouver to continue her teaching at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design where she continued to be major influence on a younger generation of artists. She received the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts in 2009. She received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO in 2014.
Contents
- Conversation between kelly lycan and liz magor
- Liz Magor Everyone Should Have a Studio Art21 Extended Play
- Biography
- Art Practice
- References
Liz Magor: Everyone Should Have a Studio | Art21 "Extended Play"
Biography
Magor was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1948. She is currently based in Vancouver. Magor studied at the University of British Columbia from 1966-1968, and Parson’s School of Design in New York from 1968-1970. Subsequently, she completed her diploma at the Vancouver School of Art in 1971. Magor won the sixth annual Audain Prize in 2009 for lifetime achievement in visual art; she was also awarded the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2001. In 2014 she was the recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize. She taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver from 2000 to 2013.
Magor's internationally exhibited and produced work usually takes the form of sculpture and photography. Magor’s work has been presented at The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Museum of Modern Art, Antwerp, Belgium; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Marburger Kunstverein, Marburg, Germany; the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; The Power Plant, Toronto; and the XLI Biennale di Venezia, Italy.
Art Practice
Liz Magor works in sculpture, installation, public art and photography. Her sculptural work investigates the ontology of ordinary or familiar objects, which she remakes and presents in new contexts. For example, Magor has created facsimiles of food items and their containers, as well as other objects such as driftwood, logs, tree stumps,and clothing. A studio- and object-oriented artist, Magor’s work emphasizes process and materiality, and highlights the difference the real and the simulated.
In previous work, Magor used mould-making and casting techniques to make replicas of coats, trays and cutlery (which she calls “serviceable objects”) as receptacles for other materials (such as candies or cigarettes). These works reference the accumulation of discarded goods and vices that appeal to our common impulses. They also raise questions about the social and emotional life of objects. Magor’s more recent work involves the repurposing of used clothing and old wool blankets (other types of “serviceable objects”).
In her article entitled Magor's Timeless Transitions, Robin Laurence writes, “Art, Liz Magor says, is the place where our perceptions are opened and examined for prolonged periods of time. Much longer, she suggests, than in our day-to-day encounters with the visual world, where we tend to interpret given signs in fixed ways, and where our first impressions are usually consolidated by our second [impressions]. Magor's art refutes such consolidation: irresolution prevails and closure eludes us. Her sculptures consistently play reality against unreality, meaning against alternative meaning, initial appearance against later revelation.”