Past Exhibitions

2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 1995 - 2000

The Paradise Institute

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller
Curator: Wayne Baerwaldt, circulated by Plug In ICA

Presented by the Walter Phillips Gallery with Plug In ICA at the 2001 Venice Biennale, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s The Paradise Institute creates a new artistic format located between disciplines, a hybrid genre borrowing from installation, video projection, audio, sculpture and performance; where the artists effectively function as movie directors, screenwriters, composers, and radio play producers.

This installation by Lethbridge artists Cardiff and Miller won "La Biennale di Venezia Special Award." The Prize was bestowed for "involving the audience in a new cinematic experience where fiction and reality, technology and the body converge into multiple and shifting journeys through space and time." This is the first time Canadian artists have received this honor at Venice. They also won the Benesse Prize, that honors "an artist (or group) who tries to break new artistic ground with an experimental and pioneering spirit."

The Paradise Institute will be presented with a related work by the artists called House Burning. In addition to these two collaborative works, visitors will have the opportunity to experience Forest Walk, Janet Cardiff's first "audio walk" produced in Banff in 1991.