Liz Magor (born 1948) is a Canadian visual artist based in

Vancouver 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 ...

. 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.

Biography

Magor was born 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 ...

Manitoba Manitoba is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population ...

in 1948. Magor studied 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 ...

from 1966-1968, and

Parsons School of Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...

in New York from 1968-1970. Subsequently, she completed her diploma at the Vancouver School of Art in 1971. She had a career as a respected educator at the

Ontario College of Art and Design Ontario College of Art & Design University, commonly known as OCAD University or OCAD U, is a public art university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its main campus is located within Toronto's Grange Park and Entertainment District neighbourhoods ...

before moving to Vancouver to continue her teaching at the

Emily Carr University of Art and Design The Emily Carr University of Art and Design (stylized as Emily Carr University of Art + Design and abbreviated as ECU) is a public university of art school, art and design located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Founded in 1925 as the Van ...

where she continued to be major influence on a younger generation of artists. Alongside

Stan Douglas Stan Douglas (born October 11, 1960) is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Since the late 1980s, he has created works in film and photography as well as theatre productions and other multidisciplinary projects that invest ...

, Brian Jungen, and

Jeff Wall Jeffrey Wall, Order of Canada, OC, Royal Society of Canada, RSA (born September 29, 1946) is a Canadian photographer. He is artist best known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and art history writing. Early in his career, he h ...

, Magor's work and studio practice was featured in the Vancouver episode of season 8 of the

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

broadcas
Art21: Art in the Twenty-First Century
Magor's internationally exhibited and produced work usually takes the form of

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

, installation, or

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

. Major solo exhibitions of her work have been presented internationally at The Renaissance Society, Chicago;

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts is the only building designed primarily by Le Corbusier in the United States—he contributed to the design of the United Nations Secretariat Building— ...

, Cambridge; The Modern and Contemporary Art Museum of Nice; Kunstverein in Hamburg; Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich, among other venues. In Canada she has exhibited widely at prominent institutions such as the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; ) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located on Dundas Street, Dundas Street West in the Grange Park (neighbourhood), Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, the museum complex takes up of phys ...

, 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 ...

, 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 ...

, and 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 ...

. Alongside

Ian Carr-Harris Ian Carr-Harris (born 1941) is a Canadian artist living in Toronto. In addition to exhibiting internationally, Carr-Harris is a professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Life Ian Carr-Harris was born in Victoria, British Columbia in ...

, she represented Canada at the XLI

Biennale In the art world, a biennale ( , ; ), is a large-scale international contemporary art exhibition. The term was popularised by the Venice Biennale, which was first held in 1895, but the concept of such a large scale, and intentionally internationa ...

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, in 1984 in a show organized by Jessica Bradley, and she was invited to participate at

documenta 8 documenta 8 was the eighth edition of documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition. It was held between 12 June and 20 September 1987 in Kassel, West Germany. The artistic directors were Manfred Schneckenburger and Edward F. Fry. P ...

in Kassel, in 1987. Magor has been recognized with civic, national, and international awards. In 2001, awarded the

Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts The Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts are annual awards for achievements in visual and media arts in Canada. Up to eight awards are presented annually, each with a prize amount of $25,000. Created in 2000 by then Governor General ...

. In Vancouver, she was recognized with the sixth annual Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts in 2009. In 2014, she was the recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, awarded by the

with a solo exhibition. In 2019, she was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France.

Art practice

Liz Magor works in

, installation,

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

and

. Her sculptural work investigates the

ontology Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of realit ...

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 between the real and the simulated. In previous work, Magor used mold-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 mpressions 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." Magor's permanent or temporary public works have been installed in Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver Regional District, and Toronto and the Toronto area. Magor is represented b
Susan Hobbs Gallery
an
Catriona Jeffries
in Canada
Andrew Kreps Gallery
in the United States, an
Marcelle Alix
in France. In her early career, she was represented by Ydessa Hendeles's The Ydessa Gallery in Toronto.

Collections

Liz Magor's work is found in public and private collections in Canada and internationally, such as the

, the

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the campus of the University of British Columbia. The gallery is housed in a building designed by architect Peter Cardew which opened in 1995 ...

, at

The University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada. With an annual research budget of $893million, UBC funds 9,992 projects annually in various fields o ...

, 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 ...

, and the

, in Canada; the

Henry Art Gallery The Henry Art Gallery ("The Henry") is a contemporary art museum located on the campus of the University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington, United States. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the Un ...

, in the United States; as well as the collections of

Centre national des arts plastiques The Centre national des arts plastiques (National Centre for Visual Arts, or CNAP) is a French institution established in 1982 under the Ministry of Culture and Communication that promotes creation of visual arts. It provides assistance to artists ...

, Frac Corse, and Frac Île-de-France in France.

Bibliography

Monographs and exhibition catalogues: * Byers, Dan; Øvstebo, Solveig; Heti, Sheila; Speed, Mitch (2019). ''BLOWOUT''. Cambridge, MA; Chicago, IL: Carpenter Center for the Arts and The Renaissance Society. . *Adler, Dan; Johnstone, Lesley; Magor, Liz; Munder, Heike; Steinbrügge, Bettina (2016). ''Habitude''. Montreal, QC; Zürich; Hamburg: Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, and Kunstverein in Hamburg. . * * *Arnold, Grant; and Monk, Philip; et al. Liz Magor. Toronto/Vancouver: The Power Plant/Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002 *

Biography

Art practice

Collections

Bibliography

References

Further reading