Janet Cardiff

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Janet Cardiff (born 1957-03-15) is a Canadian installation artist. Born in Brussels, Ontario Cardiff studied at Queen's University (BFA) and the University of Alberta (MVA). She works in collaboration with her partner George Bures Miller. Cardiff and Miller currently live and work in Berlin.

Janet Cardiff
Forty-Part Motet , 40 track audio installation
Born	1957-03-15 Brussels, Ontario
Nationality	Canadian
Field	audio art, installation art
Training	Queen's University, University of Alberta
Works	Paradise Institute, 2001, with George Bures Miller
Awards	National Gallery of Canada Millennium Prize

1 Solo Works
2 Work with George Bures Miller
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Solo Works

Cardiff's installations and walking pieces are often audio-based. She has been included in exhibitions such as: Present Tense, Nine Artists in the Nineties, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, NowHere, Louisiana Museum, Denmark, The Museum as Muse, Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie International '99/00, the Tate Modern Opening Exhibition as well as a project commissioned by Artangel in London. This project ("The Missing Voice (Case Study B)") was commissioned in 1999 and continues to run. It is an audio tour that leaves from the Whitechapel Library, next to the Whitechapel tube stop and snakes its way through London's East End, weaving fictional narrative with descriptions about the actual landscape. Cardiff represented Canada at the São Paulo Art Biennial in 1998, and at the 6th Istanbul Biennial in 1999 with her partner George Bures Miller.

In her Forty Part Motet she placed 40 speakers in 8 groups, each speaker playing a recording of one voice singing Thomas Tallis' Spem in alium, enabling the audience to walk through the space and "sample" individual voices of the polyphonic vocal music. This work now part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. ^[1]

A recent mid-career retrospective, Janet Cardiff: A Survey of Works, Including Collaborations with George Bures Miller, opened at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, Queens, in 2001 and has travelled to Montréal, Oslo, and Turin. Exhibitions in 2006 include Good Vibrations–Le arti visive e il Rock, Palazzo delle Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena, Anticipation, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and Sonic Presence, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway.

In 2005, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution commissioned and exhibited Cardiff's work "Words Drawn in Water".

[edit] Work with George Bures Miller

Paradise Institute (2001) Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

Cardiff and Bures Miller represented Canada at the 49th Venice Biennale with Paradise Institute (2001), a 16-seat movie theatre where viewers watched a film, becoming entangled as witnesses to a possible crime played out in the real world audience and on the screen. The artists won La Biennale di Venezia Special Award at Venice, presented to Canadian artists for the first time and the Benesse Prize, recognizing artists who break new artistic ground with an experimental and pioneering spirit. Cardiff and Bures Miller have recently had exhibitions at the Miami Art Museum (2007) Vancouver Art Gallery (2005), Luhring Augustine, New York (2004), Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2003), Art Gallery of Ontario (2002), National Gallery of Canada (2002) and Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario (2000).