Greg Staats

Greg Staats (b. Ohsweken, ON) is a photographer and video artist whose works combine language, mnemonics and the natural world. Staats draws upon a traditional Mohawk restorative aesthetic that defines the multiplicity of relationships inherent within the condolence ceremony. Staats works in gathering images that have formed as an archive and also draws on a personal and familial archive or recordings, papers, diaries and recently found images. His video works are contemplative and require the viewer adapt the rhythms of the natural world while conceptually defining patterns of renewal to counter loss of language and subsequent worldview. He has had solo exhibitions at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Walter Phillips Gallery, Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Mercer Union and Gallery TPW. Group exhibitions include: the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. Staats is the recipient of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. Recently, he has been Faculty for two Aboriginal Visual Arts Thematic Residencies: Archive Restored (2009) and Towards Language (2010) at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Staats has an upcoming solo exhibition in 2011 at the McMaster Museum of Art.