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PIERRE BOURGAULT | 2022 Winner of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts (GGArts) - Artistic Achievement Award

2022-11-09

Grand-Métis, November 9, 2022 - The International Garden Festival congratulates sculptor Pierre Bourgault, who took part in our 2005 edition, on winning a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

His work is currently included in #GGARTS 2022, an exhibition that creates dialogues between this year’s winning artists’ practices and works from the National Gallery of Canada’s contemporary and historical collections. Pierre Bourgault chose to show [Pillars of Salt], views of interventions, Reford Gardens, Grand-Métis, Québec, 2005/2012, a series of photographs which documents Un Jardin en mer, the project he created for the 2005 edition of the International Garden Festival, conjointly with architect Maxime Bourgault.

The GGArts represent the most prestigious distinctions for excellence in visual and media arts in Canada.

Pierre Bourgault is an artist, a teacher, a storyteller, a researcher and a navigator. He was born in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec, to a large family of sculptors. There he founded a school of sculpture in 1967 and later went on to co-found Est-Nord-Est, an international artist residence. He completed a master’s degree in visual arts at Québec City’s Université Laval in 1996.

Since the 1970s, he has created numerous habitable public works of art influenced by the Saint-Lawrence River and horizontality, as well as many public projects for integrating the arts into architecture and the environment. He has taken part in a large number of exhibitions in Quebec, Canada and abroad. In 2020, he was rewarded with the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas, the province of Québec’s highest distinction in the visual arts and craft. Pierre Bourgault continues to call Saint-Jean-Port-Joli home.

View the Canada Council’s video portraying Pierre Bourgault.

Click here for more information on the ongoing exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada.

Click here for more information on Un jardin en mer, presented at the International Gardens Festival in 2005.

Acquire HYBRIDS: Reshaping the Contemporary Garden in Métis (edited by Lesley Johnstone), 2007), a publication contextualizing Un jardin en mer