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Arts & culture, Conferences & lectures

Wild Talks: Artist Mark Dion on "Reconnaissance in the Culture of Nature and other Funny Business"


Date & time
Thursday, January 19, 2017
5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Cost

This event is free

Contact

Office of the Dean

Where

Henry F. Hall Building
1455 De Maisonneuve W.
D.B. Clarke Theatre

Wheel chair accessible

Yes

Mark Dion's visit to Concordia marks the first annual Wild Talks Lecture in honour of Catherine Wild, former Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts. The Lecture series is funded by the generosity of Erin Hogg.

Mark Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between ‘objective’ scientific methods and ‘subjective’ influences. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society.

In this public lecture Dion will discuss major exhibitions and projects completed over the past thirty years, several of which have won awards and international critical acclaim.

Born in Massachusetts in 1961, Mark Dion currently lives in New York City. He received a BFA and an honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford School of Art, Connecticut in 1986 and 2003, respectively. He also studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1982-84, and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program from 1984-85. He has received numerous awards, including the ninth annual Larry Aldrich Foundation Award (2001) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucida Art Award (2008).

He has had major exhibitions at the Miami Art Museum (2006); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004); Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2003);  Tate Gallery, London (1999), and the British Museum of Natural History in London (2007) . “Neukom Vivarium” (2006), a permanent outdoor installation and learning lab for the Olympic Sculpture Park, was commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum. Dion has recently completed a major permanent commission, ‘OCEANOMANIA: Souvenirs of Mysterious Seas’ for the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco. He is the co-director of Mildred’s Land an innovative visual art education and residency program in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania.


Mark Dion Wild Talks lecture
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