2023 Nominators

 

Scotiabank Photography Award

To ensure that the Scotiabank Photography Award is a Canada-wide peer driven search, nominators have been selected from a national sweep of experts in the fields of contemporary art, inclusive of art gallery directors, curators, practicing artists, professors, writers and critics.

They each nominate one candidate. The nominees will be adjudicated by three jurors with Edward Burtynsky as jury chair.

Kari Cwynar

Kari Cwynar is an independent curator and editor based between Toronto and Montreal. She has recently held positions as the inaugural curator of Evergreen’s public art program in Toronto’s Don Valley and Editor and Editorial Director of C Magazine. She is currently completing a PhD in Art History at Concordia University.

Nominated Rosalie Favell.


Camille Georgeson-Usher

Camille Georgeson-Usher is a Coast Salish / Sahtu Dene / Scottish academic, curator, and writer from Galiano Island, British Columbia. Her doctoral research focuses on the many ways in which peoples move together in urban space, expansive other-than-human relationalities, and intimate moments of gathering with space. Usher served as Executive Director of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, and serves on several boards and committees including Co-Chair of the Toronto Biennial of Art and Board Member of the Galiano Literary Festival. She is an Assistant Professor of modern and contemporary art and is an award-winning writer, published in academic books, magazines, arts journals, and in exhibition texts, often merging poetry with theory and futurism.

Nominated Ken Lum.

Ji-Yoon Han

Ji-Yoon Han is a Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal-based independent curator, arts writer and researcher. In her often interdisciplinary curatorial projects, she seeks to reclaim the sensible and reflexive power of the visual arts in multilayered contexts that are themselves in transformation. She currently is a research fellow for the Photography and Commission project at the Cabinet de la photographie, with the support of Les amis du Centre Pompidou, Paris, as well as the guest curator for the upcoming 18th edition of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image, which will take place in the fall of 2023 under the title Masquerades. Drawn to Metamorphosis.

Nominated Lorna Bauer.

Sunny Kerr

Sunny Kerr is a curator, artist, and writer. He is a settler of Scottish and Irish descent and Curator of Contemporary Art at Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Katarokwi/Kingston, Canada. He thinks together with the provocations and transformative potentials of art and the curatorial, and continually puts his work in reciprocal dialogue with practitioners of inventive thinking-making. He studied art at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and York University and completed his doctorate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Kerr fosters curatorial practice with graduate students, teaching in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies program, Department of Film and Media at Queen’s.

Nominated Sandra Brewster.


Sarah Milroy

Sarah Milroy is Chief Curator at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. The former editor and publisher of Canadian Art magazine, she served as lead art critic of the Globe and Mail from 2001 to 2011. In 2014, she and Ian A.C. Dejardin curated From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK, followed by Vanessa Bell (2017) and David Milne: Modern Painting (2018). Since coming to the McMichael in 2018, Milroy has curated over twenty exhibitions, including Early Days: Indigenous Art at the McMichael (2020–21), Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment (2021–22), Generations: The Sobey Family and Canadian Art (2022), Dempsey Bob: In His Own Voice (with Curtis Collins) (2022–24), Wanda Koop: Lightworks (2022), Gathie Falk: Revelations (2022–24) and Rajni Perera: Futures (2022–24). Milroy was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2020.

Nominated Geneviève Cadieux

Tom Smart

Over the past thirty-five years, Art Museum Director, Curator, Author, Essayist and Consultant, Thomas Smart has worked in art galleries and museums across Canada and the United States among them the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, where he is currently its Director and CEO, The Frick in Pittsburgh, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. He has written award-winning critical biographies, catalogues, exhibitions and books on Canadian and international artists, including painters Mary and Christopher Pratt, James Simon Mishibinijima, Alex Colville, Tom Forrestall, Peter Clapham Sheppard, graphic novelists Sethand George Walker, and many others.

Nominated Ned Pratt.

Shauna Thompson

Shauna Thompson is currently Curator at Esker Foundation, Calgary. She has supported solo exhibitions and exhibitions with many artists, including Ragnar Kjartansson, Teresa Tam, Fin Simonetti, Katie Ohe, Nep Sidhu, Kablusiak, Vanessa Brown, Anna Torma, Kapwani Kiwanga, and Jason de Haan, among others. She was co-curator, alongside Shary Boyle, of the major touring exhibition, Earthlings (2017-18), which featured solo and collaborative works of Roger Aksadjuak, Shuvinai Ashoona, Pierre Aupilardjuk, Shary Boyle, Jessie Kenalogak, John Kurok, and Leo Napayok. Prior to joining Esker Foundation, Thompson was Curatorial Assistant at the Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre. She holds master's degrees in Curatorial Studies from the University of Toronto and in English from the University of Guelph.

Nominated Chris Curreri.

Jayne Wilkinson

Jayne Wilkinson is an art writer and editor whose work blends research into environmental politics, surveillance, and the elemental cultures of the Anthropocene, with a focus on contemporary art and photo-based practices. She has written essays and art criticism for publications including art-agenda, Artforum, C Magazine, esse art + ideas, Momus, and others. From 2019 to 2021, she was Editor-in-Chief at Canadian Art, where she brought a range of new artists and voices to the platform. Prior to joining Canadian Art, she served as Editor/Publisher at Prefix Photo, oversaw publications and public programs as Assistant Curator at the Blackwood Gallery, and coordinated touring exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery. She is currently Sessional Lecturer in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto.

Nominated Krista Belle Stewart.