Marlene Creates

Four Seasons of Wind, Middle Rock, Fogo Island, Newfoundland 2017–2018

Video

This silent video documents, from the spring to the following winter, four seasons of wind around a stationary beacon on a rock in the Atlantic Ocean. The wind is made visible by advancing and receding sea ice, and the direction and intensity of the waves. Fixed-point still photographs are accompanied by data about the concurrent wind direction and several forms of wind measurement: km/hour, number of knots, and the ratings on the Beaufort wind force scale, which was devised in 1805 to standardize wind measurement at sea. Also included are the corresponding “effects on the sea” from the Beaufort scale.

Marlene Creates lives in Portugal Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. She studied visual arts at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario (Bachelor of Art Education, Honours, 1974).

Since the mid-1970s her work has been presented in over 350 solo and group exhibitions and screenings across Canada, and in Austria, China, Denmark, England, France, India, Ireland, Korea, Scotland, and the United States. She has also presented over 200 guest lectures, in Canada, Chile, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Her work is in numerous public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada.

She has been the curator of several exhibitions, worked in artist-run centres (SAW Gallery, Ottawa; and Eastern Edge Gallery, St. John’s), and taught visual arts at Algonquin College (1975–82), the University of Ottawa (1982–85), and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1998). She was a director of the Photography Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts (1991) and an invited academic visitor for the Art, Space + Nature MFA program at the Edinburgh College of Art (fall term 2015). In 2019 she was the Mentor for the Environment/Land-based Artist Residency through Eastern Edge Gallery, St. John’s, Newfoundland.

She has been invited to participate in residencies by the Art Gallery of Algoma, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (1987); Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge (1993); Boréal Multimédia, Lac Nemiskachi, Quebec (1995); Est-Nord-Est, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec (1997); Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Yukon (2003); W(here) Festival, Pictou County, Nova Scotia (2012); Full Tilt Creative Centre, McIvers, Newfoundland (2012); University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna (2013); rare Charitable Research Reserve, Cambridge, Ontario (2016); 4elements Living Arts, Manitoulin Island, Ontario (2016); Fogo Island Arts, Newfoundland (2017); and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick (2017).

Marlene Creates received a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts for "Lifetime Artistic Achievement" in 2019. Some of her other awards include Artist of the Year from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council (1996), the CARFAC National Visual Arts Advocate Award (2009), the VANL-CARFAC Long Haul Award for Excellence in Visual Arts (2009), the BMW Exhibition Prize at the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto (2013), and the Grand Jury Award at the Yosemite International Film Festival (2014). She was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2001.

Marlene Creates is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.