Holly King (born 1957) is a Canadian artist based in Montreal,[1] known for her photographs of constructed landscapes.[2][3] She views landscape as a product of the imagination.[4]

Holly King
Born1957 (age 66–67)
Websitehollykingart.com

Career edit

For thirty years, Holly King has been making meticulously staged images from miniature theaters, groups of small sculptures composed of plants in the foreground, paintings as a backdrop and cleverly reflected lighting, to give rise, once photographed, to large-scale landscapes through which King hopes to reveal the beautiful and sublime.[5][6] For the last 10 years, King has moved back and forth between constructed images to images of real places and back again. She sometimes added machine elements or constructed small still life subjects from plants.[6]

King studied visual arts at Laval University, where she earned her BFA in 1979. She then studied visual arts and modern dance at York University, completing her MFA in 1981.[5] The Canadian Centre of Contemporary Photography organized a travelling show of her photography in 1998.[7] In 2016, Linda Jansma curated a travelling mid-career retrospective of her work for the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, titled Holly King: Edging Towards the Mysterious.[5] It showed the last 10 years of her work, both constructions and her more recent "viewing boxes".[5][6]

King has been teaching at Concordia University in Montreal since 1983.[5]

Collections edit

Her work is included in the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec,[1] the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts[8] the Robert McLaughlin Gallery,[9] Concordia University,[10] and the National Gallery of Canada[11]

References edit

  1. ^ a b "King, Holly". Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (in French). Archived from the original on 18 September 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2023.
  2. ^ Dobson, Cathy (23 May 2019). "New JNAAG exhibit explores diversity in Canadian photography". The Sarnia Journal. Archived from the original on 1 February 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2023.
  3. ^ Cousineau-Levine, Penny (2004). Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination. Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 9780773528260 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ Langford, Martha (2010). "A Short History of Photography, 1900-2000". The Visual Arts in Canada: the Twentieth Century. Foss, Brian, Paikowsky, Sandra, Whitelaw, Anne (eds.). Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press. p. 298. ISBN 978-0-19-542125-5. OCLC 432401392.
  5. ^ a b c d e "Holly King: Edging Towards the Mysterious". Robert McLaughlin Gallery. 2016. Archived from the original on 5 June 2023. Retrieved 15 June 2021.
  6. ^ a b c Delgado, Jérôme (18 March 2017). "Paysages protégés" [Protected landscapes]. Le Devoir (in French). Archived from the original on 18 September 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2023.
  7. ^ "Holly King". Art Public Montreal. Archived from the original on 24 February 2023. Retrieved 15 June 2021.
  8. ^ "Holy King - Lament - From the series 'The Forest of Enchantment'". Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Archived from the original on 31 May 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2023.
  9. ^ Jansma, Linda (25 November 2015). "Solitude by Holly King". Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2023.
  10. ^ "Holly King - Seascape and the Sublime, 2005". Concordia University. Archived from the original on 18 September 2023. Retrieved 15 June 2021.
  11. ^ "Holly King". National Gallery of Canada. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2023.