Quick Facts
Biography
April Hickox (born 1955) is a Canadian lens-based artist, photographer, teacher and curator whose works are expressed through various medias including photography, film, video and installation. April Hickox has said about her works of the last 10 years, “I think in my work, I have always worked with history, place and a sense of self, and sometimes language, communication and voice”. Certainly, Hickox has created works surrounding numerous themes including landscape, history, memory, site… Hickox’s works are largely based on narratives which record aspects of humanity and nature and explore the relationship between the two with collective memories from human histories and activities.
April Hickox lives a local life on the Toronto Islands with her daughter Alexa. This is the place where Hickox derives her inspirations from. Her personal experiences as a mother of a deaf daughter also contribute to the inspirations for various of her famous works, such as her installation work Within Dialogue which shows the visual representation of language and communication across individuals and cultures.
As a contemporary artist, Hickox has received funds from all levels of government to support exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Hickox is also an active community leader, the founding director of Gallery 44 Centre For Contemporary Photography, as well as a founding member of Tenth Muse Studio and Artscape. She is on the curatorial board for Art With Heart, an auction that benefits Casey House in Toronto.
Early life, Education and Career
In 1955, April Hickox was born in Oakville, Ontario. At the age of three she moved to the Toronto island along with her parents. Her parents firstly rented a house and finally bought a house when she was seven years old. Although Hickox has moved several times throughout her life, she would always return to the Toronto Islands as her original home.
Hickox showed some of the photographs of herself in childhood on the Toronto Islands where many places no longer exist in one of her project documentaries. Many places captured in her photographs have disappeared or will disappear eventually. The changes in the landscape that are in constant negotiation with her memories made her want to document the remains of the landscape, community and memories of her childhood. This fascination with landscapes, history and memory can be seen in many of her works and has become a major theme within her practice.
In order to continue to explore interests in photography, Hickox went to London to study photography and graphic design in Twickenham College of Technology from 1973 to 1974. Hickox returned to Canada for the 5th year graduate studies program at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, where she obtained an AOCA degree and further explored her interests in photography and printmaking from 1974 to 1978.
Currently, April Hickox is an associate professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University.
Artistic Practice
Hickox is a lens-based artist working in photography, film, and installation. Her oeuvre includes complex series and subseries of works, often with overlapping themes and subjects. Toronto Island, where she lives and works, inspires many aspects of her work, and is the subject of two of her main series, Island Homes and Invasive Species.
Many of Hickox’s works look at how humans intervene in the natural environment around them, and how humans change the natural environment for their own use. Hickox describes her practice as being “based in narratives, the passage from one experience, to another in the life process encompassing history, memory, and site.”
Her work is held in major collections across Canada, including the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Canadian Council Art Bank, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto Dominion Bank, and Tom Thompson Memorial Art Centre.
Works
April Hickox’s has created works surrounding numerous themes including landscape, history, memory, site, language, communication and voice... Hickox’s works are largely based on narratives which record aspects of humanity and nature and contribute to the deeper understandings of its relationship with collective memories from human histories and activities.
Landscape
Since Hickox move to the Toronto Islands at an early age, she has experienced the frequent change of the island's environment caused by human intervention. The relationship between natural landscape and human intervention has been considered by Hickox and become a central theme of her work for over thirty-five years.
Island Homes
Island Homes is a series of photos which recorded the houses that still remained on the Toronto Islands. Since the ownership of the Islands was transferred from the City of Toronto to the newly created Metro Toronto in 1954, the older houses remaining on the Island faced a high risk of demolition. Hickox is interested in recording the historical structures of older houses that are at a higher risk of demolition and aims to “document the homes in the community as they stand today”. While a reporter from Toronto Magazine asked her why she does not like large changes or renovations of old houses, she responded, “Every house comes with its own history” Hickox said she got her own aesthetic from the older houses and she would like to keep the feeling of a house. Hickox will continue to shoot for the series over the next few years.
Invasive Species
The work Invasive Species was inspired by Hickox’s lifelong connection to Toronto Island. The series of photos contain images of natural landscape with human interventions, such as a basket hanging on a large tree or a ball which was left beside bushes. Hickox aims to demonstrate people’s interaction and alteration of the landscape for personal use through large-scale land management and daily activities. All the images record the sites discovered by Hickox that happen to be there for a different length of time. These sites reflect the impact of people on the landscape on both a long-term and short-term basis. Hickox stated that she would continue to explore and return often to see the developments and changes of the landscape.
Memory
A lot of Hickox’s work contains images of collected objects, from either people on the Toronto islands or her own collection such as the series named Gather. Almost all the collected objects contain certain meanings or have their own stories. This series (along with others she has created) takes memory as one of its central themes.
Crystal, Porcelain, Glass, 2002
Crystal, Porcelain, Glass is a series of photos of broken tea cups or the fragments of various broken objects. They were either held by a variety of hands in various positions or being repaired and stacked in what appears to be a fragile tower. All of the broken objects belong to an older woman who had died on the Toronto Islands. They were collected by Hickox from a bridge that is often called the free bridge. In an interview, Hickox described her work as “a recycle of life and change”. From this project, Hickox started to think about people who were gone, the houses that were clearly lost and what was left behind. This work eventually led into the series Landscape + Memory: An Island History in 2003.
Memento, 2007
Memento is a series of images of family heirlooms, which incorporate a photographic element. All the heirlooms were collected from Hickox’s female friends and have been passed down through generations. There is always an intimate story behind each heirloom, the objects act as reminders of loved ones who have passed away. However, all the photographic portraits from the heirlooms are rarely identified and the significance of the photos has been shifted. Memento not only records all the stories but also helps to reflect the fragility of the connection and physicality.
Archival digital prints, 16" x 20" to 20" x 24", edition of five
Landscape + Memory
Landscape + Memory: An Island History, 2003
Since Toronto Islands contains one of Toronto’s oldest residential communities, the work Landscape + Memory: An Island History explores the links between the physical landscape, as it is today, and the memories of that landscape. All the sites in Hickox’s photographs were once part of a thriving community whose homes were demolished in the 1950s. The photographs record how the land has changed after the demolition of the homes, capturing the remaining flora and landscape that now covers the resident's old home in each photo. Hickox demonstrates this work as the “traces and evidence of the past”.
Point Pelee: Landscape and Memory, 2004
Point Pelee: Landscape and Memory was commissioned by The Art Gallery of Windsor in 2003. Point Pelee has a similar history to the Toronto Island in that it was once a vibrant community before the land was purchased in the 1970s to develop a national park. Over the years, Hickox has observed the changes that have taken place in the park and documented the overlapping layers of human and natural histories through photographing. The exhibition aims to “evoke a dialogue on the history of our region, environmental issues, and the way in which communities evolve over time”. According to Hickox, the big difference between the project Point Pelee: Landscape and Memory and Landscape + Memory: An Island History is that there are less traces and evidence of the past found in the project Point Pelee. Since people tried to plant new indigenous species in the park, the residents plants had been removed.
Language, Communication and Voice
As an artist as well as a mother to a deaf daughter, April Hickox started to explore the photographic works on the themes of language, communication and voice which had become her main focus in the past ten years.
Can You Hear Flowers? 1994
Can You Hear Flowers? was produced based on Hickox’s personal experience as a mother to a deaf daughter. These experiences were transformed into a site specific work outside the Power Plant in Toronto. According to April Hickox, “the garden consisted of four sensory gardens. The idea for this work came from the question of a deaf child. Adult responses impact on a child's perception of the world around her.”
Within Dialogue, 2000
Within Dialogue is an installation work which consists of 100 photographs of mouths in the motion of communication. In 2000, The Globe and Mail reviewed an April Hickox’s exhibition Within Dialogue in Toronto’s Leo Kamen Gallery in the news article Hickox’s Photographs "Speak Eloquently from Silence". It was mentioned that the 150, small, black and white photographs of mouths embodies Hickox’s fascination with the mouth and paradoxical silence. The diverse pictures of the human mouth reflect a wide range of potential identities from the deaf to the hearing. There is also a sense of associated emotional and personal experiences as the mother to a deaf daughter. April Hickox also collaborated with Tom Third on the audio component of Within Dialogue to provide viewers an infused experience of sound and silence.
Feminism
Hickox often uses photography as media to record images of women or female objects from the past, she mainly focuses on how they reflect female identity and self-recognition throughout time.
Lives of Girls and Women, 1972-1973
This series of works, completed between 1972 - 1973, contains fourteen images of Barbie doll clothing to reflect how gender stereotypes are imposed by social structures and pressures, ultimately expressed through popular media of the society. There are fictional conversations constructed under the typical representational clothes from women’s magazine. Barbie doll clothes largely reflected the changing trends in women's clothing and lifestyle since their creation. Hickox borrows the Barbie doll clothes and combines them with a new narrative to present the changes in not only the representations of women over time but also the changing thoughts and life experiences of women throughout recent history.
Women, 1999 - 2001
This series of work consists of 9 portraits of women over 50 in age. In these black and white photographs, the women display a reflective look while closing their eyes. In this series Hickox is trying to explore the inner strength of these women and question the relationship between these women and the viewers of the images, questioning photography as the means for communication. The representations of women were derived based on the concept of women being the carrier of family memories over generations. However, in contemporary meda, mature women usually appear invisible compared their young and beautiful counterparts, while their experiences and values are also underestimated by society. From viewing the thought provoking portraits, one could reduce the misunderstanding of the mature woman from who they truly are.
Echo, 2010
These works are representing different types of hand-mirrors as a traditional female object. People would use the mirrors to see their reflection make the adjustments to their makeup/hair that they felt they needed. These actions made Hickox consider about the self-being presented in the public, and that that self may be different from the ones we truly are and what we truly believe. Nevertheless, the mirrors being photographed are unable to reflect as the mirror images are transformed into a sea of black by the scanning process. The reflection is no longer available.
Dialogue, 2012
These works picture a young girl in different moments of her life. According to Hickox, these photos of a young female represents snapshots of her daughter’s life in the information age. She demonstrates her work as “I see these images not so much as a portrait of my daughter, but as a portrait of a moment in time that could exist in the lives of many women in our digital age”. Therefore, these works bridge the dialogue between this general representation of moments of a young female and many other women’s life moments.
10x10, 2014
This work consists of five portraits of couples gazing toward the viewers in various settings. These photographs were a commissioned work for the Toronto base 10x10 Photography Project to celebrate the LGBT Canadians in the arts.
Portraits
Toronto Island Workers, 2009 – 2013
This series of work consists of over 90 public installation pieces of life-size photographs of city staff (farmers, gardeners, lifeguards, maintenance workers, etc.) on the Toronto Islands between 2009 and 2013. In the CBC interview of April Hickox, it was mentioned that the City staff are an important part of the local community who produced the opportunity to relax with their hard works. According to April Hickox, these workers should be recognized for their investments in jobs physically, emotionally and spiritually toward building the safe and beautiful environments. In fact, the installations of the works actually made the workers happy by recognizing them instead for their contribution to the city, instead of being invisible to the general public. April Hickox was appreciated by the islanders for drawing attention to these workers and reminding them not to take the environment for granted. April and colleagues presented the photographs to the visitors, making the social engagement and interactions between the installed photographs and viewers possible.
Exhibitions
- 2014 Invasive Species, Katsman Contemporary, Toronto, Ontario
- 2012 Vantage, Main Space, Katsman Kamen Gallery,Toronto, Ontario
- 2010 Compost, Leo Kamen Gallery, Project Room, Toronto, Ontario
- 2009 Gather, an installation of five backlit billboards. Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, Ontario
- 2008 Ritual, Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
- 2006 Drift, Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
- 2003 Landscape and Memory, Main Space, Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto, Ontario Landscape and Memory: Point Pelee, an installation at the Art Gallery Of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario
- 2002 Porcelain, Crystal, Glass, Main Space, Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
- 2001 Glance, Leo Kamen Gallery, Project Room, Toronto, Ontario
- 2000 Within Dialogue, an installation at Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto, Ontario Within Dialogue, site specific installation, St. Norbert Cultural Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba
- 1999 Untitled, site specific installation, Portland and Richmond Streets, Toronto, Ontario
- 1998 Tracings, Prime Gallery, Toronto, Ontario Song, installation, Portland and Richmond Streets, Toronto, Ontario
- 1997 Blink, street level photographic installation, Portland and Adelaide Streets, Toronto, Ontario Utopia/Dystopia, billboard project, Floating Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba
- 1996 Excerpts Photography Narrative, centre d’exposition l’imagier, Aylmer, Quebec
- 1995 Dissonance and Voice, installation and outdoor site work, curated by Richard Rhodes, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario When the Mind Hears, Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario New Works, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay, Ontario
- 1994 When the Mind Hears, Vu, centre d'animation et de diffusion de la photographie, Québec When the Mind Hears, part one, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto When the Mind Hears, part two, Garnet Press, Toronto When the Mind Hears, The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
- 1993 When the Mind Hears, le mois de la photo, Complexe de la Cité, Montréal
- 1992 Roses, Wind and Other Stories, Floating Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba Roses, W ind and Other Stories, Garnet Press, Toronto Roses, Wind and Other Stories, Galerie Séquence, Chicoutimi Roses, Wind and Other Stories, Vu, centre d’animation et de diffusion de la photographie, Québec
- 1991 Speak, Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver, B.C. 1990 So to Speak, La Centrale (Galerie Powerhouse), Montréal, Quebec
Teaching
As a past chair of the photography department at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) in Toronto from 1998 to 2007, Hickox’s career has also importantly included academia. In addition to her regular artistic practice, the artist is currently employed as an associate professor of photography at OCAD.
Hickox has previously held academic appointments at the following institutions: Ryerson University (1997), Canadore College (1989), Art Gallery of Ontario (1985–89), and University of Toronto (1985-90).
Community Involvement
Hickox has served as a member of several charitable and academic organizations in Toronto from 1997 to 2013. To mark the beginning of this involvement in 1997, Hickox served as a founding member of Gallery 44 Center for Contemporary Photography, a non-profit studio in Toronto where she held the position of director for seven years. Gallery 44 is an artist-run initiative whose mission statement is providing affordable resources to support photography-based artists.
Hickox is also a founding member of the Toronto-based Tenth Muse Studio, and Artscape, which she acquired the position as a committee member for the Founding Board of Directors in 1998. Through Artscape, Hickox directs artists’ residencies and studio rentals on Toronto Islands under the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts.
From 1997 to 2000, Hickox was the Advisor and Training Coordinator for Arts and Crafts at Silent Voice Camp for the Deaf, in honour of her deaf daughter Alex. She simultaneously became a part of the Manitoba Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art in Manitoba, CA. From 2010 to 2011, Hickox was responsible for building an online art collection as part of her role as guest curator for the Line Art Auction held by the LGBT Youth Line at the Art Gallery of OntarioBetween 2010 and 2013, Hickox held the position of committee member for Project 31, a fundraising auction that supports OCAD University. In 2013, Hickox also fulfilled the committee membership role as the Co-Curatorial Chair for the Art with Heart event at the Casey House Fundraising auction of Canadian Contemporary Art to support HIV/AIDS.
Collections
Works by April Hickox are held in, among others, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, Bennett Jones, Burroughs Memorex, Canada Council Art Bank, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Central Guarantee Trust, Clarkson Gordon, CN Hotels, Canadian Government, Dept. of External Affairs Government of Ontario, Glenhurst Art Gallery, Ministry of Social Services, MacLaren Art Centre, British Airways, Maclean-Hunters, Norcen Energy, Oakville Galleries, Price Waterhouse Inc., Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Trust Co. Ltd. Ryerson Polytechnic Photography Collection, Toronto Board of Education, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Burnaby Art Gallery, Fidelity Investments, Aimia.
Collaborations with others Artists
April Hickox collaborated with Tom Third, a Toronto-based sound artist to complete her installation “Within Dialogue” in 2000. April Hickox also teamed up with Rafael Ochoa who graduated from OCAD University and has been her assistant for a few years, taking photographs of different workers together for her project “Workers”.