Tara Nicholson

Office location: Visual Arts Building A214
Email: terrahnicholson@gmail.com

Areas of Research & Creative Activity: Photography, Sound Installation, Film and Video, Painting, Contemporary First Nations Art History and Critical Theory.

Bio

Born in British Columbia, Tara Nicholson is a photo-based artist whose work revolves around myths of Canadian wilderness while weaving a visual narrative between the psychological and physical presence of northern territories. Visiting remote landscapes and communities, she has created several bodies of work probing Canada’s underlying historical and present day narratives associated to its isolated landmasses.

Tara holds a MFA from Concordia University, a Post Graduate Diploma in Art History from the University of British Columbia and a BFA from Ryerson University. Currently she teaches photography and mixed-media thematic courses at the University of Victoria, the Vancouver Island School of Art and at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

Currently completing a new body of work, Tara is using photography, sound installation, painting and writing to reflect on her fascination with utopian landscapes, secret hideouts and her desire to create proof of the existence of wilderness.  Her images hover between reality and fiction representing imagined landscapes and invented states of being.

Courses:

Art 351 Open Studio/Special Studies
Art 141 Intro to Contemporary Art: Photography

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2012       New Work, Exposure Calgary-Banff Photography Festival 2012,
Botega Gallery, Banff, AB (solo show)

2010       Further North, Ignition Exhibition, Curator: Michèle Thériault
The Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal, PQ (group show)

2010       Wilderness and Other Utopias, Collision 6, Curator: Jeannie Riddle
Parisian Laundry Gallery, Montreal, Quebec (group show)
                                                                                         
2008      Further North, Curator: Justin Muir with Balcone Art Society
The Jeffrey Boone Gallery, Vancouver, BC (two-person show)

2008      Contemporary Photography in Alberta, Curator: Marc Hutchinson
Triangle Gallery, Calgary, AB (catalogue)

2007       Commonspace, Curator: Todd Janes
Latitude 53 Gallery, Edmonton, AB (solo show)

Awards and Residencies
2011       Self-Directed Art Residency, The Banff Centre, Banff, AB
2009      Carolyn and Richard Renaud Scholarship Award, Montreal PQ
2008      Canada Council Travel Grant
2008      Alberta Foundation for the Arts Project Grant
2007       Balcone Art Society, Artist Award