Biography - Catherine Richards

Catherine Richards is a visual artist working with old and new technologies. The Canada Council for the Arts awarded the Media Arts Prize (Petro Canada 1993) to her work Spectral Bodies for using virtual reality technology, as an “outstanding and innovative use of new technologies in media arts.” She received a Canadian Centre for the Visual Arts Fellowship (1993 to 1994) at the National Gallery of Canada. In addition, she co-directed the BIOAPPARATUS, an interdisciplinary residency on art, intimacy, and new technologies at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canadian Conference of the Arts, Corel Prize, 1992).

In 1991, Richards created Spectral Bodies with the first virtual reality system in Canada at the Computer Science Department, University of Alberta and the Banff Centre for the Arts. In 1993, her interactive installation, Virtual Body, was commissioned and shown at the Antwerp 93 Festival in Belgium and in the following exhibitions: “Teckno Viscera,” Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia; “The Body Obsolete,” SAW Gallery, Ottawa, January, 1994; and “Arte Virtual” in Madrid, Spain. It was awarded an honourable mention at ARS Electronica 94, and was invited to “15 years of ARS Electronica” at Landesgalerie, Museum of Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria,1994, and to the International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA), in Helsinki, Finland, 1994.

The piece Curiosity Cabinet at the end of the Millennium was commissioned for “Self Determination / Body Politic,” at the Gemeentenmuseum, Arnhem, Holland, 1995, and shown at ISEA, Montreal, 1995; “Aurora,” Interaccess, Toronto, 1998; and Dunlop Gallery, Regina, 1999. In 1996, Richards was artist in residence at the National Gallery of Canada. The Gallery commissioned her new-media work, Charged Hearts in July, 1997, which has since been exhibited at the Powerplant Gallery, Habourfront, Toronto, 1998; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for the Arts, 1998; Wayne State University, Detroit; Dunlop Gallery, Regina, 1999; and Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax, 2000. Three new works were exhibited in “Excitable Tissues,” Ottawa Art Gallery, 2000: I was scared to death / I could have died of joy; Shroud/Chrysalis, and Method and Apparatus for Finding Love.

Richards’ works have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts; AT&T Canada; The Claudia De Hueck Fellowship in Art and Science at the National Gallery of Canada; the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technologies; the Ontario Arts Council; the National Research Council; and by the generous contributions of individual scientists.

She was invited to speak at such conferences as the “Virtual Reality” at Culture, Technology and Creativity, London, England, 1991; Japan '92, The Third Video Festival in Tokyo; “Towards the Aesthetics of the Future” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and The British Arts Council (BAC), London, England, in 1993; “Deuxièmes rencontres internationales art cinéma/art vidéo/art ordinateur” at Vidéothèque de Paris in 1994; Cyberconf 94, ISEA, Finland, 1994; “New Technology, Art, and Gender” at the ICA and BAC, London, England, 1994; “Ideology of Interactivity: freedom, choice and creativity,” International Symposium of Electronic Art, Montreal, 1995; “Flesh Eating Technologies,” New Media Art and the Body, Banff Centre for the Arts, 1998; College Art Association Conference (CAA), Toronto, 1998; “Des Souris et des oeuvres,” table ronde, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1999; “Cartographies,” The General Assembly on New Media Art; Towards a Definition of New Media Art; Canadian Cartography, (ISEA), Montreal, 1999; “Curating New Media” Symposium, Ottawa Art Gallery: Ottawa, 2001; “Creativity and Innovation, New Collaboration between the Arts and Sciences,” National Research Council, 2002.

Richards’ works have been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts' Media Arts Section; the Canada Council for the Arts' Millennium Arts Fund; the National Gallery of Canada; the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology; the National Research Council of Canada; the Ontario Arts Council; the Banff Center for the Arts; the University Research Fund of the University of Ottawa; and by significant collaborations with individual scientists.

Her published articles include: “Virtual Bodies, What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me” in the media art catalogue Angles of Incidence, The Banff Centre for the Arts, 1993; and republished in Europe in French and Spanish; in Public 11: Throughput, Toronto, Winter 1995; and in Public 19/20: Lexicon: 20th Century AD, 2000, “Virtual reality, It's Deja Vu All Over Again” in Canadatext(e), Semiotext(e), NY, 1994 – “A Letter on Fungal Intimacy: Art, New Media and the Feminist Tropes” in Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context, ed. Jon Dovy, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd, London, 1995, and revised in Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture, ed. Lyn Hershman, Bay Press, San Francisco, 1996 – “Excitable Tissues” in Flesh Eating Technologies, forthcoming, Banff Press and Semiotext, N.Y.

Her work has been discussed in: “Catherine Richards, Excitable Tissues,” published by the Ottawa Art Gallery (forthcoming), which includes essays by Professor Frances Dyson (UC Davis), Professor Katherine Hayles (UCLA), and Dot Tuer (OCAD); Art and Feminism, Reckitt Helena and Peggy Phelan (Eds.), (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 2001.); in the catalogue, Engaging the Virtual, Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax, 2000; by Professor Kim Sawchuk, Reviews: “Catherine Richards,” The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, July 10 to September 14; Parachute, January to March, 1998 (Canada); “Charged Havens” by Frances Dyson in World Art, September 1996 (U.S.); “Embodied Virtuality: Or How to Put Bodies Back in the Picture” by Katherine Hayles in Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995); by Marie-Luise Angerer, “alt.feminism/alt.sex/alt.identity/alt.theory/alt.art,” in Springer, June 1995 (Austria); by Kate Davies, “art and gender on the net” in World Art, no. 2., 1995 (U.S.); by Erica Humato, “Excavation Area, A Virtual Gallery of Archeological Art,” InterCommunication, 1995 (Japan).

Catherine Richards is one of the first recipients of a two year Artist-in-Residence for Research (AIRes) fellowship jointly established by the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) for her research that will be pursued in collaboration with the Institute for Information Technology in Ottawa in 2003.

Richards is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Visual Arts, at the University of Ottawa.