ARTIST STATEMENT
Ginger Sedlarova is a Canadian collage artist and storyteller whose work bridges history, ideas and surrealism. Her collages mix images with colours and textures, maps, newsprint and found items, creating multi-layered landscapes of both fable and the past. These collages observe and celebrate people and the marks they leave on our world. She appreciates images and ideas that are eccentric, historical, colourful, that have rhythm. Her objective is to connect with a viewer through imagery and movement, showing them a moment in time or inspiring their own tale through her compositions.
Her art grew from a love of making photo collages in a former career as a graphic artist on magazines and daily newspapers. Now she does this by hand, without an editor looking over her shoulder while she works. She has two practices, one based on fact and one based on fiction. Her fact-based practice revolves around the historical and genealogical, chronicling true stories. The fiction practice involves play, colour and contrast, composing visual tales that come from pictures in her mind. Favourite elements include flowers, fruit, dots and Magritte pipe-smoking fish in bowler hats. When working, she keeps the words of an artist who inspires her, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, in the back of her mind: “You can do anything. Nothing is forbidden.”
BIOGRAPHY
Ginger Sedlarova is a collage artist, painter and photographer who worked as a graphic artist for decades in both daily media in Vancouver and on newspapers and magazines in Central Europe. Prague, Czech Republic is her second home. Her former career inspired her love of working with photos and composition, but now that she doesn’t have an editor looking over her shoulder while she works, she loves to play and indulge in the unexpected. A Beatlemaniac, Sedlarova lives in Burnaby, B.C. with her husband and two rescue cats. Her work has appeared in galleries and shows in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.
EDUCATION
2022         Artists in the Archives    
                  Kolaj Magazine in conjunction with the Henry Sheldon Museum,
                  Middlebury, VT (online) 
                  May 7 – 22, 2022 
2016-20    Advanced study in painting certificate    
                  Emily Carr University of Art & Design, 
                  Vancouver, BC 
2015          Self-directed residency    
                  Berlin, Germany
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022        Artists in the Archives: Community, History & Collage,
                 Henry Sheldon Museum, Middlebury, VT (residency, book, exhibition),
                 'May Their Memory Be For A Blessing,' (September 2, 2022 – Spring 2023)
2022        Koláž v zahradě (Collage in the Garden), Rothmayerova vila,
                 Muzeum města Prahy, 'Elevation/Nadmořská výška' 
                 (August – September 2022)
2021         IMMIX 2021: Fine Arts Meets Movies, Books, Music  
                 'They Sentenced Me To 20 Years Of Boredom' on display   
                 International online show (September 4 – October 4, 2021)
2021         Salon 15 
                 Propeller Art Gallery   
                 Toronto, Ont. (March 10 – April 3; online only)
2021         Parallel Dimensions   
                 Collage Artists of America   
                 Studio City, CA (February 2021; online only)
2021         Mail Art: unlimited Dada   
                 Propeller Art Gallery   
                 Toronto, Ont. (January 20 – April 20; online only)
2019         Luminescence IV   
                 Deer Lake Gallery   
                 Burnaby, BC
2018         Bombay Sapphire Artisans 
                 Series (finalist)   
                 Gallery Jones   
                 Vancouver, BC
2018         Local Abstractions   
                 South Surrey Arts Centre   
                 White Rock, BC 
2017         Fall for Arts   
                 Maury Young Arts Centre   
                 Whistler, BC
2017         Anonymous Art Show    
                 CityScape Community Art Space
                 North Vancouver, BC
SOLO, TWO- & THREE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2021        The Gallery at The Cultch
                 Vancouver, BC (September 2021; online only)
                 (with Seema Shah)
2021         Vancity window installation
                 Robson and Denman
                 Vancouver, BC (February – April 2021)
2021        The Gallery at The Cultch
                 Vancouver, BC (February 2021; online only)
                 (with Marliese Eilers and Valerie Arntzen)
2021         Pandemic postcards series
                 Diafano exhibition (Summer 2021; online only)
                 Barcelona, Spain

PUBLICATIONS
2022        Artists in the Archives, Kolaj Institute & Maison Kasini Canada

2021         La Source, "Ginger Sedlarova's Pop Art Collages," February 23, 2021
                 http://thelasource.com/fr/2021/02/22/les-collages-pop-art-de-ginger-sedlarova/
                 (Original in French)
2021         Creators Vancouver, “Ginger Sedlarova @ The Cultch,” September 7, 2021
                 https://creatorsvancouver.com/ginger-sedlarova-the-cultch/
2021         Creators Vancouver, “The Viola Player,” November, 2021
                 https://creatorsvancouver.com/ginger-sedlarova-the-viola-player/
2022        Collage Your Life, Storey Publishing (coming summer 2022)
2021-2022   
                  arTHANKS team member, a project in the Lower Mainland to give artwork
                  to front-line workers as a thank you for their work during the pandemic
                  (https://arthanks.ca/)
WRITING/SPEAKING
2022        'Artists in the Archives: Absence in the Archive,' Henry Sheldon Museum,
                 Middlebury, VT (online), November 9, 2022
                 https://youtu.be/Qp9N0eUqoOo
2021         Kolaj Magazine, "Collage In A Dangerous Time – The Astonishing Friedl Dicker-
                 Brandeis," Issue #33, pages 34-39
2021         Kolaj Magazine's Politics in Collage residency seminars, two presentations on                               Friedl Dicker-Brandeis' agit-prop posters, September & November
PRIZES
2021         Award of Merit, Luxembourg Art Prize, 2021