Holly Ward is a Vancouver/Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist working with sculpture, multi-media installation, architecture, video and drawing as a means to examine the role of aesthetics in the formation of new social realities. Ward’s practice often responds to social contexts, and solicits engagement through formal strategies in public spaces. Based on research of various visionary practices such as utopian philosophy, science fiction literature, Visionary Architecture, counter-cultural practices and urban planning, her work investigates the arbitrary nature of symbolic designation and the use-value of form in a social context.

Ward has produced solo shows exhibitions at Artspeak, the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, the Or Gallery (all Vancouver), YYZ Gallery (Toronto), Volta 6 (Basel), and others.  She has participated in group exhibitions in Canada, England, Mexico, the US, Norway and South Korea.

Ward has completed numerous artist residencies, notably at Fogo Island Arts, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Malaspina Printmaker’s Co-op, Vancouver.

During the academic year 2009-2010 Ward was the Artist in Residence at Langara College, wherein she commenced The Pavilion project, a 22’ geodesic dome serving as a catalyst for artistic experimentation involving artists, writers, designers and Langara College students. The Pavilion has since been moved to rural BC, where it is currently under construction as a long-term, life-as-art project.

Recent publications include Every Force Evolves a Form (Artspeak, 2012), and For Now, on Holly Ward’s Persistence of Vision, a critical essay in Jeff Derksen’s After Euphoria (JRP Ringier Press, 2013).

Ward received a BA in English Literature from the University of New Brunswick (1995), a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1999) and an MFA from the University of Guelph (2006). She is currently represented by Republic Gallery, Vancouver.

For more information visit: hollyward.org

For the Camera Obscura festival in Dawson City, 2015, Holly Ward and Kevin Schmidt will produce a collaborative project focusing on two disparate iterations of a defining characteristic of the local landscape: gravel.

>READ MORE