| Lisa Steele + Kim Tomczak have worked exclusively in collaboration since 1983, producing videotapes, performances and photo/text works. They have received numerous grants and awards including the Bell Canada prize for excellence in Video Art, a Toronto Arts Award and in 2005, a Governor General’s Award for lifetime achievement in Visual & Media Arts. They were awarded an Honourary Doctorate by the University of British Columbia (Okanagan) in 2009. Major public art commissions include Love Squared, screened on the video board at Yonge & Dundas in Toronto and Watertable, a light and sound installation that marks the original shoreline of Lake Ontario at the foot of historic Fort York. Legal Memory, their first feature-length work, has been shown in a number of film festivals since its release including: The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Festival, the Festival Internazionale Cinema Giovani (Turin, Italy), the Toronto Festival of Festivals and broadcast on TVOntario. In 1996, their work THE BLOOD RECORDS: written and annotated, received a world premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and toured with a bi-lingual catalogue published by The Oakville Galleries. Their installation work We're Getting Younger All the Time has shown at the London Institute and The City of York Public Gallery (U.K.) and at Wharf Centre d'art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie, France and the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, as part of their 2003 solo exhibition of video and photo works “…before I wake” which featured a bi-lingual catalogue. They are co-founders of Vtape, a Toronto media arts centre and teach at the University of Toronto where Steele is the Associate Chair of the Department of Art and Graduate Programme Director for the MVS (Masters of Visual Studies). "Becoming…" was featured in the Berlin Film Festival, Forum Expanded. Fall 2009 exhibitions include: a major installation, Speak City, featured in TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival), photo-text works from 2003-9 The funniest thing... at Diaz Contemporary, Toronto, photo series from the 1970s at VMAC Gallery. A major survey of their photo and video work opened at Wharf Centre d'art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in January 2010. In June 2010, their 3-channel video installation examining the built environment was included in "Empire of Dreams" at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) in Toronto. In the fall 2010, they were commissioned by the McLaren Art Centre to produce photo/text works that were exhibited in bus shelters in the city of Barrie, Ontario |