Suzy Lake

Suzy Lake (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.

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 forPhotography, conceptual art
Websitesuzylake.ca

Life

Lake was born June 24, 1947 in Detroit, Michigan.[2] She began her fine art studies at Wayne State University and Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan from 1965 to 1968.[3] During this period, she became involved with the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s.[4] She also witnessed the Detroit Race Riots of 1967.[4] Soon after, in 1968 Lake immigrated to Canada with her husband to escape the Vietnam War draft.[5]

Lake completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at Concordia University in 1980.[6]

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.[7]

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."

Early work

Lake lived in Montréal for about ten years.[8] 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.[2][9] 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.[5] This was also a period when Lake began 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.[10] To emphasize her expressions, Lake used white face make-up.[10] She then invited her friends and family to circle which of the photographs most represented her personality.

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."[11] In 2006, Roberta Smith of the New York Times compared her work to that of Cindy Sherman;[12] 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.[13] The two artists were contemporaries in the 1970s and in 1975 Sherman invited Lake to exhibit in a Hallwalls show in New York.[14] Lake continues to make work about the female body, now focusing on ageing. She exhibits her work worldwide.

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.[15][16][17] 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.[18] In 2016, she was recipient of Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.[19] and the Scotiabank Photography Award.[20]

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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Suzy Lake: Political Poetics, University of Toronto Art Centre[21]
  • Donna: Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s, from Sammlung Verbund, Vienna Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna, Rome[22]
  • Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada, 1965–1980, Art Gallery of Alberta, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto and the Vancouver Art Gallery[23]
  • Identity Theft: Eleanor Antin, Lynn Hershman and Suzy Lake, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA[24]
  • WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution 1965–1980, Los Angeles, CA Museum of Contemporary Art/Geffen Contemporary, National Museum of Women in Art, DC[25]
  • Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY
  • The Unseen Cindy Sherman: Early Transformations (1975–1976), Montclair Art Museum; Montclair, New Jersey[26]

Selected public collections
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See also

References
  1. "Suzy Lake". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  2. "Suzy Lake", in Contemporary Canadian Artists, Gale Canada, 1997, editor Roger Matuz
  3. Hanna, Martha (1993). Suzy Lake: Point of Reference. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. p. 1. ISBN 0-88884-564-2.
  4. "Suzy Lake". Ryerson University, School of Image Arts. January 28, 2000. Retrieved April 26, 2013.
  5. WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Los Angeles, California: The MIT Press. 2007. p. 258. ISBN 0914357999.
  6. "Suzy Lake: Studio Art". School of fine Arts And Music. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  7. Karen White (June 14, 1947). "Suzy Lake". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  8. Reid, Robert, "Immersing herself in the work". Kitchener Waterloo Record, February 13, 1999 (clipping – page number needed.
  9. "P027 – Véhicule Art (Montréal) Inc. fonds | Concordia University Archives". Archives3.concordia.ca. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  10. Hanna, Martha (1993). Suzy Lake: Point of Reference. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. p. 6. ISBN 0-88884-564-2.
  11. "Suzy Lake: Renaissance Woman". Magenta Magazine. November 29, 2010. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  12. "Art in Review", The New York Times, Roberta Smith, February 3, 2006
  13. https://hyperallergic.com/380348/woman-feminist-avant-garde-of-the-1970s-sammlung-verbund-mumok-2017/
  14. Gaasch, Cynnie (January 19, 2006). "When Everything Old is New Again: Suzy Lake at Hallwalls". Artvoice.com. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  15. Uhlyarik, Georgiana, ed. (2014). Introducing Suzy Lake. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario. ISBN 9781908966735.
  16. Everett-Green, Robert. "Suzy Lake AGO retrospective follows artist's diverse, four-decade-long career". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  17. Chase, Alisia. "Exhibition review: Introducing Suzy Lake". Afterimage. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  18. "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on May 26, 2011. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  19. "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.
  20. Scotiabank Photography Award http://www.scotiabank.com/photoaward/en/0,,6336,00.html
  21. "Suzy Lake: Political Poetics". Utac.utoronto.ca. June 25, 2011. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  22. "DONNA: FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE OF THE 1970s". e-flux. March 1, 2010. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  23. "Justina M. Barnicke Gallery: Traffic | Hart House — University of Toronto". Harthouse.ca. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  24. "identity theft: eleanor antin, lynn hershman, suzy lake, 1972–1978". Smmoa.org. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  25. http://www.moca.org/museum/exhibitiondetail.php?id=373
  26. "The Unseen Cindy Sherman: Early Transformations (1975–1976)". Tfaoi.com. August 1, 2004. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  27. http://ccca.concordia.ca/cv/english/lake-cv.html
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