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Artists Bio

Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak have worked exclusively in collaboration since 1983, producing videotapes, performances and photo/text works. In 2009, Steele + Tomczak were awarded an Honourary Doctorate by the University of British Columbia (Okanagan); in 2005, a Governor General’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Visual & Media Arts; in 1994 they received both a Toronto Arts Award and the Bell Canada prize for excellence in Video Art.

They are co-founders of Vtape, an award-winning media arts centre established in 1983 in Toronto. Currently Steele is Artistic Director and Tomczak is Restoration and Collections Management Director. Both teach at the University of Toronto in The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

Major public art commissions include: Watertable (2009, and expanded in 2011) a light and sound installation under the Gardiner Expressway (a raised highway) that marks the original shoreline of Lake Ontario at the foot of historic Fort York; …bump in the night (Barrie) (2010) commissioned by McLaren Art Centre and installed in bus shelters; Falling Up (2006) a video work for the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Love Squared (2006) screened on the 2400 square foot video board at Yonge & Dundas Square in Toronto. A major survey of their work, The Long Time: the 21st century work of Steele + Tomczak, curated by Paul Wong (with a 84 page catalogue), opened at On Main Gallery and VIVO, Vancouver, BC in September 2012; the exhibition traveled to A Space Gallery, Toronto, ON (2013), the Art Gallery of Windsor, ON (2016-17), and Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Halifax, NS (2017).

Legal Memory, their first feature-length work, has been shown in a number of film festivals since its release including: The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Festival, the Festival Internazionale Cinema Giovani (Turin, Italy), the Toronto Festival of Festivals and broadcast on TVOntario. In 1996, their work BLOOD RECORDS: written and annotated, received a world premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and toured across Canada with a bi-lingual catalogue published by The Oakville Galleries.

Recent solo exhibitions of their works have taken place at Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, (2014); Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal (2011); WHARF Centre D’art contemporain, Herouxville-St. Clair, France (2010); Diaz Contemporary, Toronto (2009); Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, (2009); Dazibao, Montreal (2008); the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (2003).

Selected group exhibitions and screenings of their work include: Every. Now. Then. Reframing Nationhood, Art Gallery of Ontario (2017); Imago Mundi, Instituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, Venice, Italy (2017); La Biennale de Montréal, Musee d’art contemporain de Montréal (2014); Carbon 14: Climate is Culture, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (2013); STITCHES: Suzhou Fast Forward, Workshop, Toronto (2011); Empire of Dreams: phenomenology of the built environment at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto (2010); a focus screening at EXIS: Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, Korea (2010); the Berlin Film Festival, Forum Expanded (2009); Akbank Sanat, Istanbul (2009); TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) Future Projections (2009); Sophia, Bulgaria at the Central Bath House (2008); a focus screening at Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid (2006); Beyond/In Western New York, organized by Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo (2005); Trivandrum Video Festival, New Delhi (2003); City of York Public Gallery, York, England (2000).

Lisa Steele’s early solo video works included currently in PhotoLab 2: Women Speaking Art, National Gallery of Canada, April 7, 2017 – September 10, 2017, and Canadian and Indigenous Art: 1968 to Present, May 3, 2017- April 30, 2018.

Last Update: July 2017