Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation Award Fund and Vancouver Biennale “Art Attack” Award Encourage Recipients to Pursue their Curiosities

At an event held on July 8, recipients of the two awards, the Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation Award and the Vancouver Biennale “Art Attack” Award of Excellence in Visual Art, had the opportunity to discuss the immense work that Vancouver Biennale founder, Barrie Mowatt, and director Murray Nichol have done to put Vancouver’s art scene on the map and glean pearls of wisdom from their extensive experiences in working with artists as part of the Vancouver Biennale.

“My biggest takeaway is to be persistent in pursuing your curiosities. Barrie and Murray spoke of developing your creative practice, visiting exhibitions, and getting into residencies,” says Abi Simatupang, one of the Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation Award recipients. “As a designer interested in doing more research-based work, I’ve taken this advice as a call to do exactly that: reach out to communities that inspire me, talk about how design and art affects them, and build what I learn from those experiences into my experimentation with material, typography, and illustration.”

The two partnerships—one with the Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation and the other with the Vancouver Biennale—are first-time ECU collaborations. The Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation Award Fund provides five $1,500 awards annually to third-year undergrad and first-year grad students in the BFA, BDes, BMA, MFA and MDes programs.

In recognition of Kirsten Larsen’s support of community arts programming, her founding of the Vancouver Biennale Young Ambassadors group, and the Vancouver “Art Attack” Award, Barrie Mowatt and Murray Nichol established a new iteration of the Vancouver “Art Attack” Award to commemorate the award’s tenth anniversary and the hundredth anniversary of Emily Carr. The newly created Vancouver Biennale “Art Attack” Award of Excellence in Visual

Art represents a 10-year, $12,500 commitment for graduating students. This year’s recipients of the Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation Award are Taalrumiq, Rafael Zen, Samuel Kim, Abi Simatupang, and Kai Pama. For the Vancouver Biennale “Art Attack” Award of Excellence in Visual Art, four recipients share this year’s award: Nicole Cruz Bie, Matthew N.M. Bordeleau, Jen Cheon and Gloria Lee.

In addition, recipients of the Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation Award can apply for up to $3,000 in further support from the Foundation for travel to international residencies, exhibitions, or conferences. The fund represents a $75,000, 10-year commitment to ECU with the potential of an additional $150,000 in funding with the added travel fund. The award aims to nurture artists at pivotal points in their creative development.

Helping Artists at A Critical Juncture

No stranger to arts philanthropy, Barrie Mowatt founded the Buschlen Mowatt Scholarship Program over thirty years ago at Arts Umbrella, which he and Murray Nichol continue to support through the Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation. Both are heavily involved with the Vancouver Biennale, particularly its International Artist Residency Program, and realized the need to further nurture artists at pivotal points in their creative development.

“By focusing on third-year undergrads and first-year master's students, we’re opening things up at a formative stage,” says Murray. “There was a real opportunity to offer them more exposure, more experience, more mentorship, more engagement and more conversation, which are all beautifully tied into the artistic process.”

Barrie hopes the Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation Award fund will show students that an art career has longevity and can take them far. “We wanted to ensure these awards truly enrich the recipients’ lives and experiences. Awards can push them, encourage them, and help them fully engage with the arts as a sustainable career and lifestyle. That’s a big thing for us: helping them see that a creative life is not only possible, but livable.”

Expanding Horizons Globally

In addition to the Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation Fund, Barrie and Murray have set up an additional $3,000 travel grant for which award recipients may apply, in order to visit international biennales, art expos, and exhibitions to deepen their understanding of arts and culture globally. This additional fund is critical to widening the horizons of the award recipients and keeping that relationship going between donors and recipients.

In taking a bookmaking studio course that changed the course of her research projects, working as a tutor at the Writing Centre, and being a research associate, Abi believes her experiences on campus have shaped her design practice. She is keen to apply for the travel fund to pursue her research back in Indonesia, where she hails from.

“I want to do some field work for my grad project, which centers around Indonesia's art and design spaces. So, I'd love to visit a print or design exhibition somewhere in the country. If not, I'd love to visit a place with a strong print and book culture! Japan would be a great destination to explore this.”