Internationally recognized artist Janet Cardiff, an adjunct member of the Faculty of Fine Arts, and her collaborator and partner George Bures Miller are among the recipients of the 2008 Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Awards.
Cardiff and Bures Miller received a $25,000 prize for outstanding achievement by a Canadian artist in early December.
A jury of arts professionals from across Canada selected the award recipients, including former U of L Art Gallery curator Jeffrey Spalding, now President
and C.E.O. of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.
Cardiff, born in 1957 in Brussels, Ont., and Bures Miller, born in 1960 in Vegreville, Alta., have been practising artists, singly and in tandem, since the 1980s.
Cardiff taught in the University of Lethbridge Faculty of Fine Arts from 1989 to 2000 and has returned as a visiting artist to lecture. She has a continuing relationship with the U of L as an adjunct professor in the Art Department.
In 2001, Cardiff and Miller became the first Canadian artists to win the prestigious Venice Biennale Special Award for their installation, The Paradise Institute. In the same year Cardiff's solo work, Forty-Part Motet, was awarded the Millennium Prize by the National Gallery of Canada.
They divide their time between Germany and Vancouver Island.