Artist

Marlene Creates

Marlene Creates lives and works in Portugal Cove, Newfoundland & Labrador. Her theoretical and studio research interests include photography, relational aesthetics, ecology, poetry, and place. Since 2002 her principal artistic venture has been to closely observe and work with the six acres of boreal forest where she lives in rural Newfoundland. An internet project with site-specific video-poems can be viewed at http://marlenecreates.ca/virtualwalk/

Marlene Creates was born in Montreal, studied visual arts at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario (BAE 1974), and lived in Ottawa for twelve years before moving to Newfoundland - the home of her maternal ancestors in 1985.

Her artwork, spanning three decades, has been an exploration of the relationship between human experience, memory, language and the land, and the impact they have on each other. Since the 1970s her work has been presented in over 300 solo and group exhibitions across Canada and in Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Denmark, the USA, and China.

Marlene has been the curator of several national touring exhibitions, and has worked in artist-run- centres: SAW Gallery and Eastern Edge. She has also taught visual arts at the University of Ottawa, Algonquin College, and the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. She has been a guest lecturer at over 150 institutions, including the National Gallery of Canada, Glasgow School of Art, University of Oxford, University of Kent at Canterbury, University of the West of England, University of Plymouth, University of Hartford, and many Canadian universities.

Her work is in numerous public collections including the Art Gallery of Alberta, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Canada Council Art Bank, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Canada, MacKenzie Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, and The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery.

In 1996 she was the first visual artist to receive Artist of the Year Award from the Newfoundland & Labrador Arts Council. In 2001 she was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 2009 she received the CARFAC National Visual Arts Advocate Award and The Long Haul Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts (EVAs) from VANL-CARFAC.

Artist Code: 576

Videography

Critical Writing

Art in Situ
by Justin Wonnacott. Ottawa: Festival of the Arts, 1985.