Catherine Richards

Catherine Richards (born August 4, 1947) is a Canadian visual artist who uses information technologies and electronic media in mixed-media installations and performances. Her work centers on the "archaeology" of media, and explores ideas such as virtuality, electronic media as metaphor, and the "separation of the senses". Richards also investigates the boundaries of the human body and its volatility, particularly in relation to electromagnetic fields, with networked technologies rendering these boundaries increasingly permeable and uncertain. Her work makes visible the invisible infrastructures surrounding contemporary bodies, from wireless signals to high-voltage currents.

Richards' practice is rooted in collaborative, interdisciplinary projects that investigate the relationship between the human body and technology. Her work addresses themes such as perception, immersion, and isolation. Richards has been identified as one of the first artists in Canada to work with virtual reality.

Her practice is informed by early influences in media theory, philosophies of technology, and the ways that the body is visualized through scientific metaphors. She is influenced by Marshall McLuhan (and his use of William Blake's philosophy on technology and the senses), Harold Innis, and George Grant. Paul Virilio's writing on the philosophy of technology and aesthetics has also played a role, along with the work of Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze.

Practice Richards' practice is rooted in collaborative projects that bring together interdisciplinary teams to investigate the human body in relation to science and technology. She is concerned with agency and connection, as well as immersion and isolation. Richards also explores human emotions, attempting to model the slippage between physiology and emotions in her work.

Her practice is informed by her earliest influences in media theory, philosophies of technology, the technologized body, and early concepts of posthumanism. The philosophical grounding of her work draws on the scholarship of Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, and George Grant.

2014

When Objects Have Agency. Open Gallery, OCADU. Toronto, Ontario. Objects That Make Us. The Manitoba Museum. Winnipeg, Manitoba.

2007

Health Care, Technologies and Places (HTCP): Contributions and Provocations from Humanists and Artists. University of Toronto. Toronto, Ontario.

2000

Excitable Tissues. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, Ontario. Art, Science, and Creativity. National Research Council of Canada. Ottawa, Ontario. Creativity 2000. National Research Council of Canada. Ottawa, Ontario.

1999 Shroud / Chrysalis II (2006), Resonance: The Electromagnetic Bodies Project. Ludwig Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art.

Curiosities. Dunlop Art Gallery. Regina, Saskatchewan.

1998

Charged Hearts. Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University. Detroit, Michigan. Charged Hearts. Powerplant Gallery. Harbourfront, Toronto, Ontario.

1997

Charged Hearts. Commissioned, National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa, Ontario.

1980

Sites. Warehouse Wellington Street. Montreal, Quebec.

c1970s

Closed Circuit Pieces. Pestalozzi College. Ottawa, Ontario.

Group Exhibitions Source unless otherwise cited:

2019

24/7. Somerset House. London, UK. Carbon and Light. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, Ontario.

2018

Àdisòkàmagan / Nous connaître un peu nous-mêmes / We'll all become stories. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, Ontario.

2017

Corpus. New Media Gallery. Vancouver, British Columbia. Great and North. Istituto Veneto Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Venice, Italy.

2016

The Body Electric. Virtual Exhibition. Royal College of Physicians and International Conference on Residency Education. Hybrid Bodies. Kunstkraftwerk. Leipzig, Germany.

2015

The Age of Catastrophe. Actual Contemporary & Video Pool Media Arts Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Hearts and Minds. Hannah Maclure Centre, University of Abertay Dundee, Scotland. Flesh of the World. Doris McCarthy Gallery. Toronto, Ontario.

2014

Still Lives. PHI Centre, Montreal, PQ.

2013

Transitio_MX 05 Biomediaciones. New Media Art and Video Festival. Mexico City, Mexico. Patent Pending. ZERO1 Garage. San Jose, California. Heart of the Moment: Selections from the Permanent Collection. 25th Anniversary. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, Ontario. Hybrid Bodies. PHI, Concordia University, Montreal, PQ. 2012 SPLICE: At the Intersection of Art & Medicine. Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Art Centre, Toronto, Ontario. L'intrus. YYZ Gallery, Toronto, Ontario. Mirror Neurons: AV Festival. The National Glass Centre, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK.

2010

PROTOTYPE, Electric Fields: Festival of Electronic Art and Sound. Karsh-Masson Gallery. Ottawa, Ontario.

2008

SPECTROPIA. 10th International Festival for New Media Culture, Art+Communications. Riga City Exhibition Hall. Riga, Latvia. Imagining Science: An Exploration of Science, Society and Social Change. Art Gallery of Alberta. Edmonton, Alberta.

2007

e-art, Les vases communicants. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Montreal, Quebec. Global Eyes. ACM SIGGRAPH. San Diego, California. Science in Art. Virtual exhibition Galerie de l'UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) Virtual Museum of Canada.

2006

Resonance: The Electromagnetic Bodies Project. V2/TENT. Rotterdam, Netherlands. Resonance: The Electromagnetic Bodies Project. Ludwig Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art. Budapest, Hungary. Resonance: The Electromagnetic Bodies Project. Centro Cultural Conde Duque Medialab. Madrid, Spain. Resonance: The Electromagnetic Bodies Project. Maison européenne de la photographie (MEP). Paris, France.

2005

Resonance: The Electromagnetic Bodies Project. ZKM: Center for Art and Media. Karlsruhe, Germany. Resonance: The Electromagnetic Bodies Project. Oboro. Montreal, Quebec. Digital Discourse. St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity. Valletta, Malta. The Art Formally Known as New Media. Walter Phillips Gallery. The Banff Centre for the Arts. Banff, Alberta.

2004

As yet unnameable. Bard College. Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Sydney Biennale 2004. Sydney, Australia.

2000

Engaging the Virtual. Dalhousie Art Gallery. Halifax, Nova Scotia.

1998

Aurora. Interaccess Gallery. Toronto, Ontario. Self Determination / Body Politic. Gemeentemuseum. Arnhem, Holland. Time, Space and Realities. A Space Gallery. Toronto, Ontario.thumb Shroud (2018), Àdisòkàmagan / Nous connaître un peu nous-mêmes / We'll all become stories. Ottawa Art Gallery. Ottawa, ON.

1994

The Body Obsolete. SAW Gallery. Ottawa, Ontario. Arte Virtual. Metro Opera. Madrid, Spain. 15 years of Ars Electronica. Landesgalerie, Museum of Contemporary Art. Linz, Austria. The Virtual Body. The International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA). Helsinki, Finland.

1993

State of the Image. Eldorado Museum. Antwerp, Belgium. Teckno Viscera. Institute of Modern Art. Fortitude Valley, Australia.

1981

Circuit + -. Galerie Motivation Cinq. Montreal, Quebec.

1979

Recent Work and Work in Progress. SAW Gallery. Ottawa, Ontario.

1973

Multi-monitor Installations and Performance pieces. First Women and Film International Festival. Ottawa, Ontario.

Selected publications by the artist

"Hearts and Agency." Jill Scott (ed) TRANSDISCOURSE 3: Gender in Art, Science and Body Politics. Vienna: De Gruyter, 2019. "Hybrid Bodies: Rethinking Heart Transplantation." The Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University. (Montreal, Quebec) pp 40–49, 2016. "Excitable Tissues and Virtual Worlds: Art, Science, and Technology". Inno'va-tion: Essays by Leading Canadian Researchers. (Canadian Foundation for Innovation, 2002) www.innovation.ca Republished: Judith Miller (ed), Reading & Writing Canada. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company). Approximately pp 4, 2005. "Tactical Zones: Collapse of the Visual". Cartographies: The General Assembly on New Media Art / Cartographies: Les États généraux de nouveau médias: Conference Proceedings. Montreal: Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts / L'Inter-Société des arts électroniques. 2000. "Body Boundaries". Paul Hertz (ed). YLEM.19.2, Jan/Feb. pp 15–24, 1999. "Fungal Intimacy: The Cyborg Trope in Feminism and Media Art." in Lyn Hershman Leeson (ed), Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture. (San Francisco: Bay Press) pp 258–263, 1996. "It's Déjà Vu All Over Again: Virtual Reality." Canadas. (New York: Semiotext(e)) pp 264–267, 1994. "Virtual Bodies: What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me". Angles of Incidence: reflections of multimedia artworks. Proceedings of the Multimedia Communications '93 Conference, International Council or Computer Communications, Banff, April, 1993. Banff: Media Arts Program – Banff Centre for the Arts, pp 15–22, 1993. Richards, Catherine and Nell Tenhaaf eds. Virtual Seminar on the Bioapparatus. Banff Centre for the Arts, 120 pp, 1991. "Virtual Reality: The Rebirth of Pure Art?". Woman's Art. 41: 4–6, 1991. "Virtual Worlds, Digital Images". American Film Institute Video Festival. Los Angeles, CA: American Film Institute, pp 66–67, 1987. "Mapping a Sensibility: Computer Imaging". SIGGRAPH' 83: Exhibition of Computer Art. Chicago, IL: Siggraph - Special Interest group for Computer Graphics and Animation, pp 21, 1983. "Computer Culture". Agenda. 5.1:17-21 (Spring) 1982.

Selected bibliography

2025

Arozqueta, Claudia. Heartbeat Art. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2025.

2024

Asselin, Olivier. Art School Confidential. Ottawa: Ottawa Art Gallery, 2024.

2023

Heeyoung, Kim. "Media Archaeology Methodology and Artistic Practice." Public Art, Volume 20 (2023): 38.

2022

Century, Michael. Northern Sparks : Innovation, Technology Policy, and the Arts in Canada from Expo ’67 to the Internet Age. 1st ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2022.

2019

Langill, Caroline Seck. Carbon + Light: Juan Geuer’s luminous precision. Ottawa: Ottawa Art Gallery, 2019. Cumming, Laura. "24/7: A Wake-Up Call for our Non-Stop World Review – in search of lost time". The Guardian. 2019. Online publication.

2018

McIver, Gillian. "'What does it mean to be humans?' Biotechnologies, Ethics and Art". The Art Traveller. 2018. Online publication.

2016

El- Sheikh, Tammer. "The Body Which is not One: four artists' responses to the culture and experience of heart transplantation" Hybrid Bodies. Rethinking Heart Transplantation. Canada: Concordia University, 2016.

2015

Bruneau, Jaclyn. "The Body's Freedom in Restriction" Canadian Art. 2015. Online publication. Tofts, Darren. "View in half or varying light: Joel Zika's neo-baroque aesthetics" Digital Light. Sean Cubitt, Daniel Palmer and Nathaniel Tkacz (eds). Open Humanities Press, 2015. 193-203

2011

Cook, Sarah, & Diamond, Sara (eds). The Banff New Media Institute Dialogues: Euphoria and Dystopia. Banff: Banff Center Press, 2011. 490-97. Mura, Gianluca (ed.). "Case Study: Catherine Richards." Metaplasticity in Virtual Worlds: Aesthetics and Semantic Concepts. Igi Global, 2011. 61-63.

2009

Dyson, Frances. "Enchanting data: body, voice and tone in affective computing." Emotion, Place and Culture. Liz Bondi, Laura Cameron, Joyce Davidson, Mick Smith (eds). Aldershot, Hants, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2009. 247-266. Dyson, Frances. "Atmospheres". Sounding New Media: rhetorics of immersion and embodiment in the arts. California: UC Press, 2009. 1-246. Langill, Caroline. Shifting Polarities: Exemplary Works of Canadian Electronic Media Art Produced Between 1970 and 1991. Montreal, QC: La fondation Daniel Langlois, 2009.

2005

Tuer, Dot. "The Heart of the Matter: the Mediation of Science in the Art of Catherine Richards." Mining the Media Archive. Essays on Art, technology, and cultural resistance. Canada: XYZ Books, 2005. 25-33. Sawchuck, Kim. "Charged Heart: The Electronic Art of Catherine Richards." Horizon 0.6. Banff New Media Institute, 2005.

2003

Hayles, N. Katherine. "Supersensual Chaos and Catherine Richards' "Excitable Tissues"." Catherine Richards: Excitable Tissues, edited by Sylvie Fortin, The Ottawa Art Gallery, 2003, pp. 9–24. Morse, Margaret. "The Poetics of Interactivity." Women, Art & Technology. Judy Malloy (ed). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 17-31. Sawchuk, Kim. "Charged Heart: The Electronic Art of Catherine Richards." Horizon Zero. Issue 06. Banff New Media Institute, 2003.

2001

Phelan, Peggy. Art and Feminism. Reckitt, Helena (ed). New York: Phaidon Press, 2001. 171-172, 292.

1998

Sawchuk, Kim. "Catherine Richards." Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine. 89, Jan/Feb/March (1998): 49-50.

1996

Dyson, Frances. "Charged Havens." World Art. March (1996): 42-47. Hayles, Katherine N. "Embodied Virtuality: Or How To Put Bodies Back in the Picture". Immersed In Technology: Art and Virtual Environments. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. 1-28.

1995

Huhtamo, Erkki. "Excavation Area: A Virtual Gallery of Archaeological Art." InterCommunication. 14, Autumn (1995): 147.

Selected awards, fellowships, residencies, and research-creation projects