Karl Beveridge
(1945–)
Karl Beveridge
1945–
Karl Beveridge (1945– ) is a Canadian conceptual artist who lives and works in Toronto. His practice engages contemporary cultural, social, political, and labour-related issues through the use of participatory and dialogical aesthetics. Beveridge creates art with his long-term partner, Carole Condé, to critique notions of power, control, and authority.
Known for their political activism through creativity, Beveridge and Condé have produced staged photographic work in collaboration with community organizations and trade unions for the past forty years. Their artistic method utilizes elements of set design and mise-en-scene, montage, and slogans (or captions) to stage complex visual tableaux that speak to thematic concerns.
Beveridge and Condé began working as conceptual artists in 1969 in New York City. There they participated in social activism, picketing the Museum of Modern Art for its lack of representation of female artists and critiquing Donald Judd’s apolitical minimalism. This resulted in It’s Still Privileged Art, an exhibition of politicized cartoons questioning the ideological assumptions behind the art market, which was staged at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1975.
In 1977, Beveridge and Condé returned to Toronto; around that time, their work became concentrated on labour and the trade union movement. Their collaborative method was solidified with Standing Up (1981), which used actors, photographs, and narrative accounts to document the aftermath of a protest outside a Radio Shack warehouse in Barrie, Ontario.
The pair’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at major institutions and art spaces such as the Institute of Contemporary Art in London; Museum Folkswang in Essen; Daizibao Gallery in Montreal; Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires; The National Gallery of Canada; The Art Gallery of Ontario; and the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney. Their work also intervenes and is accessible in public spaces including bus stops, billboards, and union halls.