An interdisciplinary artist, writer, performer and filmmaker and this year’s Audain Prize recipient, Carole Itter was born in Vancouver in 1939 and studied at the University of British Columbia, the Vancouver School of Art and at L’Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, Italy. Her sculptures, collages and performances, as well as the large-scale assemblages/installations which she is probably best known for, are strongly influenced by the people and places where she has lived and frequently reflect social and political issues.

Over the many years she has lived in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood, Itter has incorporated discarded domestic and industrial items found in attics and basements, lanes and thrift shops, and received objects from friends into her assemblages. These assemblages, such as the one featured in Paved with Gold: A Tribute to a Canadian Immigrant Neighbourhood (Vancouver Art Gallery, 1991), have also addressed issues of historical and contemporary immigration to Canada.

Other solo exhibitions include Rattles (Western Front, 1984), The Float (Or Gallery, 1995), The Pink Room (Grunt Gallery, 2000), and Metallic: A Fish Film (Grunt Gallery, 2007). Her work was also included in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2008. Along with Daphne Marlatt, she compiled and edited Opening Doors (1979), an archive of oral history about Vancouver’s East End as part of the Sound Heritage Series for the British Columbia Provincial Archives. She has also produced a number of short stories and prose pieces, including Whistle Daughter Whistle and The Log’s Log. Itter’s work is included in the collections of The Canada Council Art Bank, the Vancouver Public Library and the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Established in 2004, The Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts has become one of Canada’s most prestigious honours. Supported by the Audain Foundation, the Audain Prize grants $30,000 annually to a senior British Columbia artist selected by an independent jury. Previous winners of the Audain Prize include Paul Wong (2016), Michael Morris (2015), Fred Herzog (2014), Takao Tanabe and Gathie Falk (2013), Marian Penner Bancroft (2012), Rodney Graham (2011), Robert Davidson (2010), Liz Magor (2009), Jeff Wall (2008), Gordon Smith (2007), Eric Metcalfe (2006), E.J. Hughes (2005) and Ann Kipling (2004).