MILLS PURCHASE PRIZE COLLECTION WINNERS, 2006

March 7 - April 20

The Mills Prize, an annual purchase award dedicated to G.H. Stanley Mills, was established to recognize the talents of young Concordia University students enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts. The purchased work may be in visual arts, performing arts or cinema, by undergraduate or graduate students. Undergraduate work in the visual arts is chosen from the Annual Undergraduate Exhibition, while graduate level visual arts proposals are submitted to the selection committee. Cinema prizes are chosen from a screening of student work, and performing arts selections are based on recommendations from the performing arts (Dance, Music and Theatre) department chairs. This award is meant to celebrate the legacy of Stanley Mills as much as it is to support and celebrate the talents of young artists.

The 2006 prize was awarded to Trevor Kiernander, Eduardo Menz, Celia Perrin-Sidarous and Sara A. Tremblay. Celia Perrin-Sidarous and Sara A. Tremblay use photography to explore relationships – in Perrin-Sidarous’s case, between human and nature, while Tremblay is concerned with associations between people. Both of these artists create poetic images. Celia Perrin-Sidarous plays in the space between the verbal and the visual, as can be seen in Nesting. Sara A. Tremblay manipulates the printing process in order to produces images that are textured and somewhat melancholic, as witnessed in her work Cet Autumne.

Trevor Kiernander’s Silence is Golden, Silence is Rust, represents the moment of a peak experience when time slows, of living and of death. The undifferentiated background behind the figures is used to achieve a rupture in the narrative, opening the possibility for a new meaning in the pairing of images. Eduardo Menz’s video, Las Mujers de Pinochet, also works with rupture, here between the image and the commentary. The viewer is brought to realize the commentary (verbal and visual) is at odds with the imagery. In the first instance a beauty queen’s public appearance is contrasted with the description of a torture victim’s ordeal, the sequencing then inverts and the beauty queen’s experience is overlaid on the footage of the witness’s testimonial.

The 2006 Mills Prize works are on display with a selection of purchases from previous years, including Carole Baillargeon, Haut et Bas, 1993 (1995 Prize), Kathleen Sellars, Hold It, 1996 (2000 Prize), Elena Willis, In a Beautiful Place out in the Country, 2003 (2004 Prize), Jennifer Campbell, Untitled (Chafing Series), 2003 (2003 Prize), Karen Tam, Angel Island Songs of Golden Mountain, (1999 Prize) and Arwa Abouon, Untitled (Generation Series) (2004 Prize).

Biography
G.H. Stanley (Sandy) Mills was a lecturer in Canadian History at Concordia (Sir George Williams) during the early 1950s, as well as an occasional writer on travel, history and biography. Mills published a book on the Kirke Brothers who, one hundred thirty years before Wolfe, won a sea battle against Admiral Roquemont de Brison‘s fleet and thus captured Quebec for the British Empire for the first time.

During the late 1940’s, after a stint in the Canadian Navy, Stanley Mills went to Oxford University’s Merton College for a year where he found a talent for acting but not academic studies. Later he became a warm friend, biographer and confidant of Lord Beaverbrook, as well as of Sir Winston and Lady Churchill.

Mills gave generously with awards and bursaries to support education, recognizing talent and enthusiasm as much academic prowess, especially in writing, teaching, and music, as well as to the physically challenged and needy.

Stanley Mills died of cancer in February 1993 at the age of 70.