15 Facts About Rodney Graham

William Rodney Graham was a Canadian visual artist and musician.

Rodney Graham studied art history at the University of British Columbia and subsequently went to Simon Fraser University.

Rodney Graham intended to concentrate on writing and literature before taking a modern art course taught by Ian Wallace at SFU.

Rodney Graham was most often associated with other west coast Canadian artists, including Vikky Alexander, Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas, Roy Arden, and Ken Lum.

Until 1997, when he represented Canada at the Venice Biennale with the film loop Vexation Island, Rodney Graham was most well known for his series of photographs of Welsh oaks seen upside-down.

Rodney Graham then hung the pictures upside down, like camera obscura images.

In 1998 Rodney Graham produced his definitive work on this theme, a series of seven monumental images of Welsh oaks printed on color paper to produce warm deep sepia and charcoal hues.

Rodney Graham placed himself in the photograph as the owner standing at the counter, waiting for a customer.

In 1994, Rodney Graham began a series of films and videos in which he himself appears as the principal character: Halcion Sleep, Vexation Island, How I Became a Ramblin' Man, and The Phonokinetoscope.

In Vexation Island, a shipwrecked sailor, played by Rodney Graham, wakes up on a tropical island only to be knocked unconscious by a falling coconut that he has succeeded in shaking out of a palm tree; after a while he reawakens, returns to the tree and the cycle repeats.

The artist, played by Rodney Graham, is shown sitting on a chair in the setting of an alternative cultural institution, with an audience watching him trying to hit a gong with potatoes.

In 2003, Rodney Graham turned to drawing and painting for the first time.

Rodney Graham represented Canada at the 47th Venice Biennale and among awards he has received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, Toronto, the Kurt Schwitters-Preis, Niedersachsische Sparkassenstiftung, Germany, and the Audain Prize for lifetime achievement in visual arts, British Columbia.

Rodney Graham lived in Vancouver and was married to the artist Shannon Oksanen.

Rodney Graham was 73, and suffered from cancer in the year prior to his death.