Gathie Falk is a Canadian painter, sculptor, installation and performance artist based in

Vancouver, British Columbia Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

. Since the 1960s, she has created works that consider the simple beauty of everyday items and daily rituals.

Life and work

Gathie Falk was born on January 31, 1928, in

Alexander Alexander () is a male name of Greek origin. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here ar ...

near

Brandon, Manitoba Brandon () is the second-largest city in the province of Manitoba, Canada. It is located in the southwestern corner of the province on the banks of the Assiniboine River, approximately west of the provincial capital, Winnipeg, and east of the ...

, Canada, to immigrant

Russian Mennonite The Russian Mennonites ( it. "Russia Mennonites", i.e., Mennonites of or from the Russian Empire are a group of Mennonites who are the descendants of Dutch and North German Anabaptists who settled in the Vistula delta in West Prussia for about ...

parents. Her father, Cornelius, died that same year and her mother, Agatha, went to work to support her and her older brother Gordon, while her eldest brother, Jack, had to move in with another family. In 1930, the Falk family relocated to another small town in southern Manitoba and continued to move around, eventually ending up in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. , Winnipeg h ...

when Falk was a teenager. At 16, she left high school to work so she could assist with the family finances and completed her education via correspondence courses. When she was 19, Falk and her mother moved to Vancouver, where she still resides. Her first job in the city was at a luggage factory, where she sewed pockets inside the suitcases. This experience helped her develop her skills in detailed handicraft, which would later become integral to her artistic practice. Falk then became a school teacher in 1953 and taught elementary students until 1965, when she left to commit herself full-time to creating art. Falk has worked in various media, including performance, installation, ceramics, painting, drawing and papier-mâché. Her early paintings from the 1950s and 1960s were influenced by

German Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...

. Falk created her first ceramic interpretations of quotidian objects, such as shoes, boots, and a suit coat, while studying ceramics with Glenn Lewis at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

. Her works find their source in the events and objects of everyday life, inviting us to consider the significance of the commonplace, including her well-known ceramic sculpture ''Fruit Piles'' (1967–70), ''Single Right Men's Shoes'' (1972–73) and ''Picnics'' (1976–77). As described by Vancouver Art Gallery senior curator Bruce Grenville, "Falk is remarkable for her ability to seize the ordinary and turn it into a powerful revelatory force... the paintings and sculptures she produces have a deeply personal presence that is grounded in an intense scrutiny of her daily environment." Drawing from subjects ranging from apples, oranges and shoes to dogs, dresses, hedges and clouds, and often amplifying their beauty through repetition, her work summons and recalls for viewers the ways in which the everyday claims a vivid place in our imagination. Between 1968 and 1972, Falk created some fifteen performance artworks, which typically involved undertaking everyday activities, such as eating an egg, putting on makeup, or reading a book. Falk has participated in group and solo exhibitions in Canada, the United States, France and Japan. A major

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in software development, popular culture, and the arts. ...

show of her work at the

Vancouver Art Gallery The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Fr ...

in 2000 later toured to various Canadian galleries including the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...

. Recent exhibitions include ''The Things in My Head'' (2015: Equinox Gallery, Vancouver), and ''paperworks'' (2014: Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby, British Columbia). More recently, th
McMichael Canadian Art Collection
held anothe
retrospective
show from June 2022 to January 2023. Falk's work can be found in private and public collections including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the

Winnipeg Art Gallery The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international artists. The museum also holds the world's largest collect ...

, the

Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (, MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex. Founded in 1964, it ...

, the Burnaby Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada. She is represented b
Equinox Gallery
in Vancouver, B.C., Canada and b
Michael Gibson Gallery
in London, Ontario, Canada.

Grants and awards

Falk has received many awards including the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (1990), the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada () is a Canadian state order, national order and the second-highest Award, honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the Canadian Centennial, ce ...

(1997), the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2003) and the Viva Award for Lifetime Achievement (2012). Others are: * Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts (2013) * Order of British Columbia (2002) *

Canada Council The Canada Council for the Arts (), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporations of Canada, Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It is Canada's public arts funder, with a mandate to ...

Senior Grant (1980) *

Arts Bursary (1971, 1969, 1968) * Sun Award (1968) *

Short Term Grant (1967)

Life and work

Grants and awards

References

Further reading