Grant Guy, Performance and Media Artist, has been named the third recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council Arts Award of Distinction. This $30,000 award is presented annually to recognize the highest level of artistic excellence and distinguished career achievements by a professional artist.
“We were thrilled with the 17 nominations to the award this year,” says Dr. Judith Flynn, Chair of Council. “After six hours of deliberations, the eight jurors unanimously agreed on Grant Guy. One of the key questions they asked themselves was: Can we imagine our community without Grant Guy? Naming him as the recipient of the 2004 Arts Award of Distinction was their response.”
Over the past 25 years, Grant Guy has worked as a director, designer, playwright, curator, arts programmer, video producer, performance artist and writer. His many talents have been shared with a diversity of arts organizations locally and nationally including: Theatre Projects, Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Magnus Theatre (Thunder Bay), Theatre Calgary, the Stratford Festival Theatre, Cinematheque, Médiathèque (Montreal), Video Pool, University of Manitoba School of Art and the Manitoba Association of Playwrights, to name only a few.
In the 1980’s Grant Guy founded Shared Stage, an eclectic venue for live art. He has also exhibited installations at Main/Access Gallery, Ace Art and the Plug In Gallery. He has participated in the Manitoba Art Council’s Artists in the Schools Program and he has been the recipient of numerous grants awarded to him by both the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Currently operating under the identity of his experimental puppet theatre company, Adhere and Deny, (which he founded in the 1990’s), Grant Guy is known for his commitment to advancing the art form and bringing work to the stage that invariably filters into the mainstream.
Most notably, the jury was powerfully moved by the integrity Grant Guy possesses as an individual artist and the influence his practice has upon others in the arts community.
Dr. Flynn comments, “This award is the Manitoba Arts Council’s way of acknowledging our senior artists and thanking them for the invaluable contribution they have made to the artistic culture of our province and beyond, and for the legacy they are creating.”
Grant Guy was honoured at a private ceremony, where he was presented with his $30,000 Arts Award of Distinction.
