Kim Tomczak

Biography

Kim Tomczak is a multidisciplinary artist primarily known for his work in performance, photography and video. Born in Victoria, B.C. in 1952, he graduated with honours from the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design) in 1975. His work has been shown extensively both nationally and internationally, including at the Paris Biennale, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, the Video Biennale in Vienna (where he received first prize for a tape co-produced with Lisa Steele) as well as the Musee de Beaux Arts in Montreal, Documenta 8 in Kasel, Germany, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. His work is in many collections including: the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Oakville Galleries. He is a co-founder of Vtape, a Toronto media arts resource centre. Since 1983, Tomczak has worked exclusively in collaboration with Lisa Steele, producing videotapes, performances and photo/text works. They have received numerous grants and awards including the Bell Canada prize for excellence in Video Art, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts; the Peter Herndorff award for Media Arts through the Toronto Arts Awards, and, in 2005, a Governor General’s Award for lifetime achievement in Visual & Media Arts. They have been awarded two public art commissions, one for an outdoor screen at Dundas Square and Watertable, a light installation that marks the original shoreline of Lake Ontario. Steele and Tomczak were awarded Honourary Doctorates by the University of British Columbia (Okanagan) in 2009. A major survey of their photo and video work opened at Wharf Centre d'art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in January 2010. Becoming…, a 4 channel installation work was in Montreal in September as part of Le Mois de la Photo a Montréal. A travelling survey of their work from the past decade entitled The Long Time, and curated by Paul Wong, opened in Vancouver in September 2012, traveled to A Space Gallery in Toronto in December 2013, and will travel to Halifax in June 2014 and The Art Gallery of Windsor in September 2015.

Research Interest

collaboration with Lisa Steele, producing videotapes, performances and photo/text works