2011 Curator Shirley Madill

The Future of the Present

Marshall McLuhan raised the bar for the future of technology introducing strategies in electronic media that offered the potential of open-ended encounters that could close the communication gap. He believed that artists were a generation ahead of technologies; visionaries who could provide a stronger means of social navigation through physical and non-physical space. The Future of the Present presents work by artists who use new technologies to form a vocabulary for a non-pictorial art. The art projects in Nuit Blanche are connected through unique interplays between the spiritual, material, and social spheres. Whatever the scale, the physical or psychological interaction they invite has some form of intimacy achieved through technical illusion and artificiality. The artists transform architectural and city spaces through the use of technology, interaction, light, sound and illusion.

Biography:

Shirley Madill is Executive Director at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. She has worked in the field of contemporary art in various capacities at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and Rodman Hall Art Centre. Recent curatorial projects include David Hoffos: Scenes from the House Dream which won an OAAG Award in 2010 for the publication and Burtynsky Factories. She also won the 2007 OAAG Award for the exhibition Sublime Embrace: Experiencing consciousness in contemporary art.