artist lecture: richard purdy

Art and Art History Presents

Richard Purdy

Tuesday 19 January 2010
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

Sheridan, Annie Smith Mezzanine
1430 Trafalgar Road, Oakville, ON L6H 2L1




Richard Purdy: I am particularly drawn to in situ installations, monumental and serial artworks, texts, sensory art and the creation of videos and performances. Primarily active in the scientific humanities, I work in all mediums. I believe that art is about symbols, and that the symbol colonies I create are larger than fields, techniques or specific disciplines. Embracing the cultural bulimia of our début-de-siècle, I try to fuel the fire ... delighting in enigmas, searching out obscure subject matter, lies, minutiae, and meretricious figures of speech, weaving fictions into them, and teasing them up by the hair.

Born in Ottawa, Richard Purdy is presently a tenured professor of drawing at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. He has mounted over 150 expositions over three decades of practice, and is known as much for his writing as his art making, having published 24 books and catalogues. Recently, Purdy has been active with three-year individual research creation subsidy by both the FQRSC (2004-2007) and the SSHRC (2007-2010). His work is the subject of three Master's theses in Art History, and 266 reviews. In 1998 Richard Purdy launched Les industries perdues with François Hébert, realizing 28 projects in public art with a long list of collaborators, notably Carmelo Arnoldin. In 2001 he received his PhD in artistic practice from UQÀM; his thesis looked at the Buddhist and pre-Buddhist stupa. In 2006 he was awarded his University's Institutional Research Prize. Presently, he is directing the Research Creation Laboratory in Sensory Art at UQTR. This summer Richard Purdy will mount a large-scale installation at the Espace Shawinigan, Quebec.


Image: L'Oeil de l'artiste (2008), digital photograph