Luanne Martineau (born 1970) is a contemporary, multimedia Canadian artist best known for her hand-spun and felted wool sculptures. Her work engages with social satire as well as feminist textile practice.
Martineau was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She earned a fine art diploma from the Alberta College of Art & Design in 1993, and a Masters of Fine Art from the University of British Columbia in 1995. She was previously an associate curator at the Art Gallery of Calgary, and later a professor of theory and curatorial studies at the University of Victoria. [1] She is now based in Montreal, where she is an associate professor of painting and drawing at Concordia University. [2]
Martineau has been exhibiting across Canada and internationally since the mid-1990s. Her work blurs the boundaries between craft and fine art, combining labour-intensive female handwork with questions about the politics of the body, style and ideology. Her "drulptures" are three-dimensional felt assemblages that are not literal interpretations of the human form, but which have bodily shapes and grotesque fleshy resemblances. [3] [4] In 2010–2012, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal organized a touring exhibition of Martineau's work. [5] This exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue that included essays by Lesley Johnstone, Dan Adler, and Shirley Madill. [6]
In 2007, Martineau with the winner of the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation's VIVA Award for the Visual Arts. [7] In 2005 she was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award, and in 2009 she was shortlisted. [8]
Martineau's work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, [9] the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, [10] the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, [11] the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, [12] amongst others.