Bio

Taking cues from 19th-century landscape painting, 20th-century cinema, and 21st-century planetary research, Kelly Richardson crafts digital artworks, often in the form of large scale video installation, which offer imaginative glimpses of the future that prompt a careful consideration of the present.

Her work has been widely acclaimed in North America, Asia and Europe. One person exhibitions include among others NGCA (England), Dundee Contemporary Arts (Scotland), Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (Austria), SMoCA (USA), CAG Vancouver (Canada), VOID Derry (Ireland), and a major survey at the Albright-Knox (USA).

She was selected for the Beijing, Busan, Canadian, Gwangju and Montréal biennales, and major moving image exhibitions including the The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Her video installations have been included in the Toronto International Film Festival as part of Future Projections, Sundance Film Festival in New Frontier and she was honoured as the featured artist at the Americans for the Arts National Arts Awards.

Richardson’s work has been acquired into significant museum collections across the UK, USA and Canada, from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (USA), SMoCA (USA) and Albright-Knox Art Gallery (USA) to the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario (Canada), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Canada), Arts Council Collection (England), Southampton City Art Gallery (England) and the Towner (England). Her video installations have been featured in numerous media including Artforum, The Guardian, BFI Sight and Sound, New Scientist, Time Out London, Aesthetica, British Journal for Photography, CBC, BBC, ITV, Sky News and New York Times.

Kelly Richardson was born in Burlington, Ontario, Canada in 1972. From 2003-2017 she resided in north east England where she was a Lecturer in Fine Arts at Newcastle University. She currently lives and works as a visitor on the traditional territory of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples of the Coast Salish Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. She is Professor in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria.

Synopsis

Richardson’s HALO (2021) is a sequel to one of the artist’s earliest works entitled Camp, a video which presents a cliché of outdoor life filmed in 1998. The full moon on a summer evening is distorted by the heat rising from a crackling campfire. On the fire, popcorn bursts. With each burst, the moon dances.

23 years after producing Camp, the promise of what summer brings has changed. The HALO trilogy presents two full moons, one partially red and another fully red, both distorted by heat rising from something burning and crackling out of view. The third, features a red solar eclipse known as the ring of fire; embers float around and smoke swirls.  

Representing the past, present and future, HALO references the significant feedback loop we are now in after decades of warnings. Campfires are now banned in the summer in British Columbia where the artist lives. With severe, extended droughts being the new normal, the risk of wildfire is extreme. Compounding the threat, 2021 produced record temperatures reaching a staggering 49.6C, smashing the previous Canadian record by 4.6C. It was the 3rd worst fire season on record, all three of which were recorded within the previous 5 years. Simultaneously, the UN declared that it is code red for humanity as a result of climate change.

Echoing a landmark scientific study which warns of increasingly extreme heatwaves, droughts and flooding (which this heatwave was followed by months later) the UN Secretary General said: “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. But, as today’s report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.”