Suzy Lake
Suzy Lake outside the Galerie Donald Browne, Montreal, before her 2011 exhibition Reduced Performing
Born (1947-06-24) June 24, 1947
Detroit,
United States
EducationWayne State University, Concordia University
Known forPhotographer, conceptual artist
Websitesuzylake.ca

Suzy Lake RCA (born June 24, 1947) is an American-Canadian artist based in Toronto, Canada, who is known for her work as a photographer, performance artist and video producer.[1] Using a range of media, Lake explores topics including identity, beauty, gender and aging. She is regarded as a pioneering feminist artist and a staunch political activist.[2]

Life

Lake was born June 24, 1947, in Detroit, Michigan.[3] She began her fine art studies at Wayne State University and Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, from 1965 to 1968.[4] During this period, she became involved with the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s.[5] She also witnessed the Detroit Race Riots of 1967.[5] Soon after, in 1968 Lake immigrated to Canada with her husband to escape the Vietnam War draft.[6] Settling in Montreal, she found herself amidst social upheaval as a result of the Quiet Revolution.[7]

Originally a painter, Lake in Montreal began experimenting with photography, using herself as a model.[8] She completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at Concordia University in 1980.[9]

Lake taught at the University of Guelph from the 1980s until her retirement in 2008, when she was given the title Professor Emerita.[10]

Artistic impact

Using costumes, make-up and props, Lake creates photo-based self-portraits, often by assuming new identities. Her adopted personas highlight the possibilities for deception involved in posing for the camera. An example is "Suzy Lake As Patty Hearst", a project Lake made in collaboration with Bill Jones, featuring the artist as the eponymous Hearst.[11] American artist Cindy Sherman has cited Lake's photo-performance as an influence on her work.[12]

Suzy Lake has twenty-five portfolios of her artwork. Each deals with politics of gender, identity and beauty. She creates art to express how what she does relates to what she is or to what people think she is. She uses her photographs, videos, and performances to draw attention to social norms and constraints.

Lake explained in an interview that she always uses herself in her art because this is how she develops understanding of social restrictions for women.

Lake uses art to control her own representation. Her earlier On Stage photos were influenced by Detroit. In these, Lake photographed herself as a wife and mother but later she wanted to make work to reverse that . In Montréal, Lake observed a marked power difference between genders, and she stated that women have a "glass ceiling" that led to her Choreographed Puppet photos. More recently, Lake introduced a new vision of beauty by displaying her older body in her portfolio entitled "Beauty and the Aging Body."

Work

Lake lived in Montréal for about ten years.[13] She taught at the Montreal Museum School (1969–1978) and was mentored by the Minimalist artist, Guido Molinari. She was active in the early conceptualist art scene there. In 1971, Lake became a co-founder (with twelve other artists) of the artist-run gallery Véhicule Art Inc.[3][14] Lake's work during this period was influenced by photo-based artists (including Les Levine) who were using the camera to represent an idea rather than documenting reality.[6] This was also a period when Lake began to concentrate on the subject of identity. In her 1973 series of photographs entitled A One Hour (Zero) Conversation with Allan B., she is the subject as the camera records her expression at various intervals of a candid conversation with a friend.[15] To emphasize her expressions, Lake used white face make-up.[15] She then invited her friends and family to circle which of the photographs most represented her personality. Much of her work in the 1970s featured herself as a subject, including works such as Choreographed Puppets, 1976–77.[8]

Lake moved to Toronto in 1978, and became involved in the growing contemporary photography community.[8] From the mid-1980s until 1994, Lake ceased appearing as the subject of her work as she turned her attention to more direct forms of camera activism. Among her notable works from this period is a series of photographs she created in collaboration with the Teme-Augama Anishnabai Band of Bear Island in Temagami, Ontario, to bring greater public awareness to their land claim.[16]

Lake continues to make work about the female body, now focusing on ageing. She exhibits her work worldwide.

Issues

In an interview in Magenta magazine, Lake noted the influence of the political climate of the 1970s on her work. She stated: "I know that I am a feminist, but I can see that my politics originated in human rights issues, civil rights, the FLQ in Quebec and race issues in the States."[17] In 2006, Roberta Smith of the New York Times compared her work to that of Cindy Sherman;[18] however, Thomas Micchelli, reviewing the feminist collection of the Vienna-based Verbund AG for Hyperallergic.com asserts that Lake was an influence on the latter in school.[19] The two artists were contemporaries in the 1970s and in 1975 Sherman invited Lake to exhibit in a Hallwalls show in New York.[20]

The artist's performances are often considered to be influenced by other prominent performance movements at the time such as Fluxus happenings.[2] As a dedicated anti-war activist, Lake supported Hans Haacke and other artists working in the Institutional Critique movement to counter cultural support for the Vietnam War effort.[2] Lake's work became more explicitly activist in the later 1980s, which many credit to her friendship with the Teme-Augama Anishnabai of Bear Island, for whom she produced a series of work in the early 1990s.[1]

Lake was considered an early example of body art, due to the physicality of many of her performances. While living in Montreal, Lake collaborated with a number of prominent theater and performance groups including the Judson Dance Theater to create performances exploring the interactions of human bodies and inanimate objects in the built environment.[2] Other works by Lake explore the relationship between the body and authority, often through the act of destruction.[2]

Major exhibitions

Lake was the subject of a comprehensive retrospective exhibition, Introducing Suzy Lake, at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2014–15 curated by Georgiana Uhlyarik.[21][22][23] In 2016, she received the Scotiabank Photography Award. This resulted in another survey exhibition curated by Gaëlle Morel at the Ryerson Image Center (RIC) in Toronto, as part of the 2017 Contact Photography Festival.

Honours

Suzy Lake is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[24] In 2016, she was recipient of Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.[25] and the Scotiabank Photography Award.[26]

She has been represented by Galerie Gilles Gheerbrant (1974–1977); Jared Sable Gallery (1976–1990), and Paul Petro Contemporary Art (1995 – 2012). Lake is currently represented by Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto (2012 – ); Solway Jones Gallery, Los Angeles (2009 – ); Galerie Donald Browne, Montréal (2010 – ).

Bibliography

Catalogues

  • Suzy Lake: Concealment/Revealment, (2006), Hallwalls Gallery, Buffalo, NY
  • Attitudes et comportements, curator Jocelyn Fortin, Suzy Lake (2002) ISBN TR647 L35 2002
  • Suzy Lake: Points of Reference by Martha Hanna (1993) ISBN 0-88884-564-2, ISBN 978-0-88884-564-1
  • Suzy Lake: authority is an attribute, part II (1992) ISBN 0-920810-48-9, ISBN 978-0-920810-48-4
  • Suzy Lake: are you talking to me? (1980) OCLC: N6545 V353
  • For Suzy Lake, Chris Knudsen, and Robert Walker (1978) OCLC: 83615339
  • Suzy Lake (1975) ISBN 0-919890-02-4

Selected books/journals

  • Suzy Lake: Life & Work. Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2021. ISBN 978-1-4871-0247-0. Erin Silver.
  • Radical Gestures: Feminist Performance Art in the US and Canada, 1970's to c.2000, by Jayne Wark (2006) ISBN 0-7735-2956-X
  • Carte Blanche, a compendium of Canadian photography (2006) ISBN 0-9739739-0-0, ISBN 978-0-9739739-0-7
  • Point & Shoot: Performance and Photography, France Chouiniere and Michele Theriault eds. (2005) ISBN 978-2-922135-26-8
  • Photography in Canada, 1839–1989: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2023. ISBN 978-1-4871-0309-5. Sarah Bassnett and Sarah Parsons.
  • Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art By Canadian Women, by Johanna Householder and Tanya Mars (2004) ISBN 0-920397-84-0, ISBN 978-0-920397-84-8
  • Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography since 1955, by Penny Cousineau-Levine (2003) ISBN 0-7735-2826-1, ISBN 978-0-7735-2826-0
  • From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art, by Lucy Lippard (1976) ISBN 0-525-47427-7, ISBN 978-0-525-47427-2

Selected exhibitions

Selected public collections

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Suzy Lake". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on October 20, 2012. Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Silver, Erin (2021). Suzy Lake: Life & Work. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978-1-4871-0247-0.
  3. 1 2 "Suzy Lake", in Contemporary Canadian Artists, Gale Canada, 1997, editor Roger Matuz
  4. ↑ Hanna, Martha (1993). Suzy Lake: Point of Reference. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. p. 1. ISBN 0-88884-564-2.
  5. 1 2 "Suzy Lake". Ryerson University, School of Image Arts. January 28, 2000. Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  6. 1 2 WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Los Angeles, California: The MIT Press. 2007. p. 258. ISBN 978-0914357995.
  7. ↑ Silver, Erin (2021). Suzy Lake: Life & Work. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978-1-4871-0247-0.
  8. 1 2 3 Bassnett, Sarah; Parsons, Sarah (2023). Photography in Canada, 1839–1989: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978-1-4871-0309-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ↑ "Suzy Lake: Studio Art". School of fine Arts And Music. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  10. ↑ Silver, Erin (2021). Suzy Lake: Life & Work. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978-1-4871-0247-0.
  11. ↑ Karen White (June 14, 1947). "Suzy Lake". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on September 14, 2012. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  12. ↑ Silver, Erin (2021). Suzy Lake: Life & Work. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978-1-4871-0247-0.
  13. ↑ Reid, Robert, "Immersing herself in the work". Kitchener Waterloo Record, February 13, 1999 (clipping – page number needed.
  14. ↑ "P027 – Véhicule Art (Montréal) Inc. fonds | Concordia University Archives". Archives3.concordia.ca. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  15. 1 2 Hanna, Martha (1993). Suzy Lake: Point of Reference. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. p. 6. ISBN 0-88884-564-2.
  16. ↑ Silver, Erin (2021). Suzy Lake: Life & Work. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978-1-4871-0247-0.
  17. ↑ "Suzy Lake: Renaissance Woman". Magenta Magazine. November 29, 2010. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  18. ↑ "Art in Review", The New York Times, Roberta Smith, February 3, 2006
  19. ↑ "The Feminist Avant-Garde, Now More than Ever". May 20, 2017.
  20. ↑ Gaasch, Cynnie (January 19, 2006). "When Everything Old is New Again: Suzy Lake at Hallwalls". Artvoice.com. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  21. ↑ Uhlyarik, Georgiana, ed. (2014). Introducing Suzy Lake. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario. ISBN 9781908966735.
  22. ↑ Everett-Green, Robert. "Suzy Lake AGO retrospective follows artist's diverse, four-decade-long career". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  23. ↑ Chase, Alisia. "Exhibition review: Introducing Suzy Lake". Afterimage. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  24. ↑ "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on May 26, 2011. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  25. ↑ "The Canada Council for the Arts – Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts". ggavma.canadacouncil.ca. Archived from the original on March 11, 2016. Retrieved March 7, 2016.
  26. ↑ Scotiabank Photography Award http://www.scotiabank.com/photoaward/en/0,,6336,00.html
  27. ↑ "Suzy Lake: Political Poetics". Utac.utoronto.ca. June 25, 2011. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  28. ↑ "DONNA: FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE OF THE 1970s". e-flux. March 1, 2010. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  29. ↑ "Justina M. Barnicke Gallery: Traffic | Hart House — University of Toronto". Harthouse.ca. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  30. ↑ "identity theft: eleanor antin, lynn hershman, suzy lake, 1972–1978". Smmoa.org. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  31. ↑ "Exhibitions".
  32. ↑ "The Unseen Cindy Sherman: Early Transformations (1975–1976)". Tfaoi.com. August 1, 2004. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  33. ↑ "Suzy Lake".
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