Kristiane Church lives in Winnipeg and is currently completing her BFA at the University of Manitoba. Her video and photographic works engage with issues of immersion and compression, vagueness in representation, and subdual in highly stylized environments. Her work was recently screened as part of a show at Platform Centre for Photographic & Digital Arts. Image Credit: Julie, 2013, digital composite image
UM student wins inaugural national photography prize
Supporting the future of Canadian photography, the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize has announced the winners of the inaugural Aimia| AGO Photography Scholarship Program, and University of Manitoba student Kristiane Church was selected as a winner out of 110 entries.
Church is a BFA student in the School of Art. Her video and photographic works engage issues of representation and feature in highly stylized, constructed environments.
Valued at more than $20,000, the scholarship program is intended for full-time students — Canadian or international — who are entering their final year of study toward a bachelor’s degree of fine arts in photography at one of eight participating post-secondary institutions.
Joining Church as a winner of this new national award, is Marvin Luvualu Antonio of the Ontario College of Art and Design University and Paige Lindsay of Ryerson University.
Each students receives $7,000 to put towards tuition for their final year of undergraduate study. An exhibition of their work will also be displayed inside the Weston Family Learning Centre Community Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) beginning in November 2014. Each winner’s school will each receive a $1,000 honorarium.
Eight respected and established visual arts institutions from across the country nominated students for the Prize this year. A finalist from each participating school was selected by an internal competition, before being submitted to the jury. A selection of their works can be seen online at www.aimiaagophotographyprize.com.
Of this year’s winners the jury wrote, “We’re thrilled to be offering these inaugural scholarships to Kristiane, Marvin and Paige. Each of them demonstrates a restless experimentation and a unique view on the ways images are made and operate in the world. They have embraced photography as an expanded practice — their work includes performance, installation and participatory sculpture, as well as still and moving images. We’re pleased to support their final year of undergraduate study.”
A selection of the finalists works can be seen online here.