biography

Margie Kelk's artistic practice reflects contemporary concerns about cultural history and politics. She takes an exploratory and experimental approach as she appropriates and reconstructs visual fragments of ideas through diverse artistic media. which include ceramic sculpture, drawing and painting, video and photography. She has traveled extensively in China and Latin America, and much of her earlier artistic production revolved around the cultures of these two regions. Concerned with the alienation, which affects so many people in today's world of social media networks, she now directs her attention to the plight of disconnected individuals living on the edge of society. Although the world is full of virtual connections, interpersonal relations are often reduced to a minimum. Kelk has produced a series of ink on encaustic drawings, and over 200 heads, individuals without bodies, --which stand in definite tension with the environment surrounding them.

Kelk has been exhibiting her artwork in Canada since 2000. She was on the Board of the Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts (Toronto, Ontario) for eight years, and was Chair for six of them. Since 2009 she has been an active member of Red Head Gallery (Toronto), and she is now gallery Chair. Her China-based books and drawings were represented by the Headbones Gallery in 2006-7, and she was a member of Gallery 1313 in Toronto, from 2003 until 2007. She has been showing in Canada, the United States and Europe. She has received prizes for several of her works, and has been awarded grants by the Ontario Arts Council. Margie is a graduate of Wellesley College, The Johns Hopkins University (PhD.), and the Toronto School of Art degree program.