Salute to three remarkable women artists and teachers

 

Sometimes you just have to give a party to celebrate excellence. On May 11, the chic Hôtel Gault in Old Montreal was the scene of a salute to three remarkable, much-decorated women whose influence has had a profound effect on a generation of young artists.

Christopher Jackson, Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, hosted the reception to celebrate their achievements and thank them for helping to make the Department of Studio Arts the success it is.

Françoise Sullivan was this year’s recipient of the Governor-General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. She was one of the signatories of the Refus Global, the radical manifesto that launched the Quiet Revolution.

An avante-garde dancer during the 1940s and 1950s, she turned to abstract sculpture in the 1960s and conceptual art in the 1970s. Since then, her approach to painting has varied from abstract, shaped canvases she calls tondos to works based on colour and gesture. She has been teaching at Concordia since 1977.

Irene Whittome has developed an international reputation for her haunting art installations, which explore the concepts of time, memory, the origins of life, and the interplay between internal and external spaces.

Not long after she arrived at Concordia in 1974, she developed the Open Media program for students who want to break through artistic boundaries.

Art photographer Raymonde April is highly influential in her field, and has won both the Prix du Québec and the Prix Paul-Émile Borduas. She uses documentary, fictional and autobiographical perspectives to capture images of daily life. She has taught in Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts since 1995.