April Hickox
April Hickox (born 1955) is a Canadian lens-based artist, photographer, teacher and curator whose practice includes various medias, from photography, film, video and installation.
[2] 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.
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.
[4] Hickox' has created works surrounding numerous themes including landscape, history, memory, site, language, communication and voice ...[1] 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.
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.
[2] 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.
[10][non-primary source needed] 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.
[10] 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.
[13] The diverse pictures of the human mouth reflect a wide range of potential identities from the deaf to the hearing.
[13] April Hickox also collaborated with Tom Third on the audio component of Within Dialogue to provide viewers an infused experience of sound and silence.
[14][non-primary source needed] This series of works, completed between 1972 and 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.
[16] However, in contemporary media, mature women usually appear invisible compared their young and beautiful counterparts, while their experiences and values are also underestimated by society.
[19][non-primary source needed] This series of work consists of over 90 public installation pieces of life-size photographs of city staff (farmers, gardeners, lifeguards, maintenance workers, etc.)
[20][non-primary source needed] 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.
[21] 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.
[20] 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.
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.
[29] Through Artscape, Hickox directs artists' residencies and studio rentals on Toronto Islands under the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts.
