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Catherine Richards
Catherine Richards (born 1952) is a Canadian visual artist working in both old and new media.[1][2] She was a leading figure in early virtual reality technologies,[3] and became the first artist in Canada to incorporate them into her artworks - famously using it in her 1991 artwork Spectral Bodies.[4] Born and raised in the country's capital, Ottawa, she began her career in various research positions within the field of Canadian broadcasting and communications.[5] In 1993 Richards became a part-time professor with the School of Architecture at Carleton University, before she began teaching at the University of Ottawa and eventually becoming the University Research Chair in 2003. By 2010 she had reached full professor status and after teaching as a Professor of Media Arts for nearly a decade, Richards was granted Emerita status by the Department of Visual Arts.[5] She considers new technologies as art material, using them within her work to explore our volatile sense of ourselves as we continuously shift boundaries - a process in which she believes new information technologies play a starring role. Additionally, she explores the spectator's role in these technologies like "jam in the electro-magnetic sandwich."[5] Education and early workCatherine Richards began her postsecondary education in 1971 with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in English at York University in Toronto. She then furthered her education, receiving an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa in 1980. During this time she worked as a researcher for the Research Branch of the Canadian Radio and Television Commission. Following her degree at the University of Ottawa, she began her role as Research Consultant for various Ministers, and later the president, of the Department of Communications. She continued her work in the Canadian broadcasting industry throughout the 1980's, pausing briefly to curate a show entitled "The Artist as the Young Machine" for the Ontario Science Center in 1984.[5] In 1993 Richards began teaching as a part-time professor with the School of Architecture at Carleton University, located in Ottawa, Ontario. The following year, she left Carleton and pursued a part-time teaching job with the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa. In 1997 she became an Assistant Professor within the department, and by 2001 she was an Associate Professor for the University. It was during her time in this position that she became the first, and sole, artist to be awarded University Research Chair at the University of Ottawa; a position which she held between 2003 and 2018. In this way she acted as a model for other universities, and became part of the on-going movement across North America to accept art as research within universities - a goal in which Richards played a significant pioneering role.[5] It was around this time as well that she became an Academician for the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Finally, in 2010 Richards became a Full Professor for the University of Ottawa, until 2020 where she retired with Professor Emerita status.[5]  Meanwhile, she was producing various artworks and participated in many exhibitions, conducted research, and presented at events to which she was invited. Throughout the early 70s to the present, she has been apart over 50 group exhibitions and 12 solo shows, with works displayed across the world and in various institutions, including the National Gallery of Canada. One major venue in which Richards exhibited internationally was the 2004 Sydney Biennale. Her work has been discussed in publications by major theorists in the field including Katherine Hayles and Frances Dyson, and has been included in key surveys such as Art & Science Now, edited by Stephen Wilson. Richards is well known for collaborating with scientists and won the Artist in Residence for Research Fellowship (AIRes) at the National Research Council of Canada, 2002–2005, and is a 1993 recipient of the Petro Canada Media Arts prize from Canada Council for the Arts for Spectral Bodies. Her work on virtuality and new media is considered groundbreaking in setting the aesthetic terrain, realm of artistic intervention and substantive issues.[6] She considers her work to explore both the viewer, as well as the information technology and thus the relationship between them. She works with old and new types of technology, using them as a medium to explore our sense of self as we change and grow. Career Solo Exhibitions[7]Over the course of her career, Richards has exhibited her work solo many times across Canada and internationally. 1970 - 1980Closed Circuit Pieces. Pestalozzi College. Ottawa, ON. Early-mid 1970s. 1980 - 1990Sites. Warehouse Wellington Street. Montreal, PQ. 1980. 1990 - 2000 Charged Hearts. Commissioned, National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa, ON. 1997. Charged Hearts. Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University. Detroit, MI. 1998. Charged Hearts. Powerplant Gallery. Habourfront, Toronto, ON. 1998. Curiosities. Dunlop Art Gallery. Regina, SK. 1999. 2000 - PresentExcitable Tissues. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, ON. 2000. Art, Science, and Creativity. National Research Council. Ottawa, ON. 2000. Creativity 2000. National Research Council of Canada. Ottawa, ON. 2000. Health Care, Technologies and Places (HTCP): Contributions and Provocations from Humanists and Artists. University of Toronto. Toronto, ON. 2007. When Objects Have Agency. Open Gallery, OCADU. Toronto, ON. 2014. Objects That Make Us. The Manitoba Museum. Winnipeg, MN. 2014. Group Exhibitions[7]1970 - 1980Multi-monitor Installations and Performance piece. The First Women and Film Festival. Ottawa, ON. 1973. 1980 - 1990Circuit + -. Galerie Motivation Cinq. Montreal, PQ. 1981.  1990 - 2000State of the Image. Eldorado Museum. Antwerp, Belgium. 1993. The Body Obsolete. SAW Gallery. Ottawa, ON. 1994. Arte Virtual. Metro Opera. Madrid, Spain. 1994. 15 years of Ars Electronica. Landesgalerie, Museum of Contemporary Art. Linz, Austria. 1994. The Virtual Body. The International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA). Helsinki, Finland. 1994. Curiosity Cabinet, at the End of the Millennium. International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA). Montrėal, PQ. 1995.  Self Determination / Body Politic. Gemeentemuseum. Arnhem, Holland. 1995. Time, Space and Realities. A Space Gallery. Toronto, ON. 1995. Aurora. Interaccess Gallery. Toronto, ON. 1998. Cyber Heart. Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for the Arts. Banff, AB. 1998. 2000 - PresentEngaging the Virtual. Dalhousie Art Gallery. Halifax, NS. 2000. Sydney Biennale 2004. Sydney, Australia. 2004. Resonance: The Electromagnetic Bodies Project. Oboro. Montreal, PQ. 2005. Resonance: The Electromagnetic Bodies Project. Ludwig Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art. Budapest, Hungary. 2006. SPECTROPIA. 10th International festival for new media culture, Art+Communications. Riga City Exhibition Hall. Riga, Latvia. 2008. PROTOTYPE, Electric Fields: Festival of Electronic Art and Sound. Karsh-Masson Gallery. Ottawa, ON. 2010. SPLICE: At the Intersection of Art & Medicine. Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Art Centre, Toronto, ON. 2012.  L’intrus. YYZ Gallery, Toronto, ON. 2012. Transitio_MX 05 Biomediaciones. New Media Art and Video Festival. Mexico City, Mexico, 2013. Patent Pending. ZERO1 Garage. San Jose, CA. 2013. Heart of the Moment: Selections from the Permanent Collection. 25th Anniversary. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, ON. 2013. Hybrid Bodies. PHI, Concordia University, Montreal, PQ. 2013. Still Lives. PHI Centre, Montreal, PQ. 2014. Hybrid Bodies. Kunstkraftwerk. Leipzig, Germany. 2016.  Corpus. New Media Gallery. Vancouver, BC. 2017 Àdisòkàmagan / Nous connaître un peu nous-mêmes / We’ll all become stories. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, ON. 2018 24/7. Sommerset House. London, UK. 2019 Carbon and Light. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, ON. 2019. Art School Confidential. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, ON. 2024. Published and video artworksSpectral Bodies (1991) video artwork utilizes the juxtaposition of short narratives to reveal how the self can be lost if the body is lost.[8] Body in Ruins (1986) published in Body invaders: panic sex in America[9] is a photo piece, composed of video stills and text, which explores the uncertainty of the body in virtual reality. Publications Richards, Catherine. “Computer Culture”. Agenda. 5.1:17-21 (Spring) 1982. Richards, Catherine. “Mapping a Sensibility: Computer Imaging”. SIGGRAPH’ 83: Exhibition of Computer Art. Chicago, IL: Siggraph - Special Interest group for Computer Graphics and Animation, 1983. pp 21. Richards, Catherine. “Virtual Worlds, Digital Images”. American Film Institute Video Festival. Los Angeles, CA: American Film Institute, 1987. pp 66-67 Richards, Catherine. “Virtual Reality: The Rebirth of Pure Art?”. Woman's Art. 41: 4-6, 1991. Richards, Catherine. “Virtual Bodies: What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me”. Angles of Incidence: reflections of multimedia artworks. Proceedings of the Multimedia Communications ’93 Conference, International Council or Computer Communications, Banff, April, 1993. Banff: Media Arts Program – Banff Centre for the Arts, 1993. pp 15-22. Richards, Catherine. “Virtual Bodies”. Public 11: Throughput. Toronto: Public Access, 1995. pp 34-39. Richards, Catherine. “Body Boundaries”. Paul Hertz (ed). YLEM.19.2, Jan/Feb 1999. pp 15-24. Richards, Catherine. “VR”. Excerpt from ‘Virtual Bodies’. Public 19/20: Lexicon 20th Century A.D. Toronto: Public Access, 2000. Volume 2/2, p. 101-102. Richards, Catherine. “Hybrid Bodies: Rethinking Heart Transplantation.” The Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University. (Montreal, Quebec, 2016) pp 40-49. Awards, fellowships, and residencies
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