Melanie O'Brian | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 1973 |
| Education | BA in Art History from Reed College, Portland, Oregon; MA in Art History at the University of Chicago, Chicago IL |
| Known for | curator of contemporary art |
Melanie O'Brian (born 1973) is a Canadian curator of contemporary art and writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
O’Brian received her BA in Art History from Reed College, Portland, Oregon, and her MA in Art History at the University of Chicago, Chicago IL. [1]
She was Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery 2001-2004, [1] Director/Curator at Artspeak 2004-2010, the Curator/Head of Programs at The Power Plant in Toronto 2011-2012, Director/Curator of Simon Fraser University Galleries 2012-2020, and Acting Director/Curator and Associate Director/Curator from 2022-2023.
At The Power Plant she curated solo exhibitions of work by Kerry Tribe, Stan Douglas, Omer Fast, and Simon Fujiwara, and group exhibitions that included the work of Abbas Akhavan, Karen Cytter, Geoffrey Farmer, Claire Fontaine, Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, Oscar Tuazon, Ulla von Brandenburg, and Franz West, among others. [2]
At SFU Galleries she curated solo exhibitions of work by Hito Steyer1, Walid Raad, Raymond Boisjoly, Marianne Nicolson, Andreas Bunte [3] and Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, [4] as well as co-curated group exhibitions such as Maps and Dreams with Brian Jungen, This Now, More Than Ever with Steve Collis, [5] and Geometry of Knowing and Through a Window: Visual Art and SFU 1965-2015 with Amy Kazymerchyk.
In 2022, she was appointed the associate director and curator of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC. She will also serve as acting director for 2022 as the Belkin continues to search for a permanent replacement for Scott Watson, who retired in 2021. [6] In 2022, she also was one of the writers contributing to Althea Thauberger's publication, The State of the Situation. [7]
She is the editor of such publications as Vancouver Art & Economies (Arsenal Pulp Press/Artspeak, 2007); Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism with Jeff Khonsary (Fillip/Artspeak, 2010); Entertainment (The Power Plant, 2011); (with Milena Hoegberg) of 5,000 Feet is the Best: Omer Fast (The Power Plant/Henie Onstad Center/Sternberg Press, 2012); $5 Handshake: Art on Treaty 8 and with Stan Douglas, of Territory (SFU Galleries, 2018).
She was a contributing curator to MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture at the Vancouver Art Gallery.[ citation needed ] [8] She has taught at Emily Carr University, Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. [9]
Marian Penner Bancroft is a Canadian artist and photographer based in Vancouver. She is an associate professor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she has been teaching since 1981. She has previously also taught at Simon Fraser University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She is a member of the board of Artspeak Gallery and is represented in Vancouver by the Republic Gallery.
Althea Thauberger is a Canadian visual artist, film maker and educator. Her work engages relational practices rooted in sustained collaborations with groups or communities through social, theatrical and textual processes that often operate outside the studio/gallery environment. Her varied research-centric projects have taken her to military base, remote societies and institutional spaces that result in performances, films, videos, audio recordings and books, and involve provocative reflections of social, political, institutional and aesthetic power relations. Her recent projects involve an extended engagement with the sites of their production in order to trace broader social and ideological histories.
Karin Bubaš is a contemporary Canadian artist known for her work in various media including photography, painting, and drawing.
Lorna Brown is a Canadian artist, curator and writer. Her work focuses on public space, social phenomena such as boredom, and institutional structures and systems.
Jamelie Hassan is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist, lecturer, writer and independent curator.
Judy Radul is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist, writer and educator. She is known for her performance art and media installations, as well as her critical writing.
Laiwan is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator and educator based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her wide-ranging practice is based in poetics and philosophy.
Tania Willard is an Indigenous Canadian multidisciplinary artist, graphic designer, and curator, known for mixing traditional Indigenous arts practices with contemporary ideas. Willard is from the Secwepemc nation, of the British Columbia interior, Canada.
Arabella Campbell is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia in 1996, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2002. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute from 1998 to 2000. She has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. She works out of a warehouse studio in False Creek Flats, Vancouver.
Allyson Clay is a Canadian visual artist, curator, and educator based in Vancouver, B.C.
Julia Feyrer is a Canadian visual artist, performer, and writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Kathy Slade (1966) is a Canadian artist, author, curator, editor, and publisher born in Montreal, Quebec, and based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is currently a Term Lecturer at Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts.
Kimberly Phillips is a writer, educator and curator in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is Director of SFU Galleries at Simon Fraser University.
Richelle Bear Hat is a Blackfoot and Cree artist, based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on Treaty 7 territory. Bear Hat's work explores the ancestral transmission of knowledge, memory, and Indigenous relationships to land. According to curator Kristy Trinier, "her practice investigates ideas surrounding family relationships and the types of knowledge that are capable of being passed through them. These ideas are explored through the use of photography, transfers, video and paper based works. It is important to use materials and means of production that support the transference of memory and provide a platform for storytelling."
Krista Belle Stewart is a First Nations visual artist from Canada. Stewart works in a variety of formats, using archival materials, photographs, and collage.
Kamala Todd is a filmmaker, community planner, and curator based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is of Métis, Cree and European descent. Her writing, films, and curatorial practice often revolves around the topic of Indigineity in Canada.
Cindy Mochizuki is a multimedia Japanese Canadian artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Through her drawings, installations, performance, and video works created through community-engaged and location-specific research projects, Mochizuki explores how historical and family memories are passed down in the form of narratives, folktales, rituals and archives. Mochizuki's works have been exhibited in multiple countries including Japan, the USA, and Canada. Mochizuki received MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the School For Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in 2006. She received Vancouver's Mayor's Arts Award in New Media and Film in 2015 and the VIVA and Max Wyman awards in 2020.
Denise Ryner is a Canadian curator and writer. She was director and curator at Or Gallery, Vancouver (2017-2022). Ryner has worked as an independent curator, writer and educator at several galleries, artist-run centres and institutions, in Toronto, Vancouver and Berlin. Ryner has contributed to publications like FUSE magazine and Canadian Art magazine.
Scott Watson is a Canadian curator, writer, and researcher based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Watson was the Director/Curator of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia from 1995 to 2021. As faculty in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia, he helped initiate the Critical Curatorial Studies program at UBC in September 2002. Through his research and publications, he has acted as a champion of contemporary Vancouver artists.
Doris Shadbolt, née Meisel LL. D. D.F.A. was an art historian, author, curator, cultural bureaucrat, educator and philanthropist who had an important impact on the development of Canadian art and culture.
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