Nancy Paterson (artist)


Nancy Evelyn Paterson was a Canadian artist and writer known for her work in new media.
She was an associate professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University from 1990 to 2018, and was Facilities Coordinator at Charles Street Video, a non-profit, artist-run centre providing production and post-production facilities for digital video and audio.
Paterson was considered an important contributor to the cyberfeminist movement and to the discussion of the role of gender in electronically mediated experience.
Paterson was also known for her electronically-based artworks. Her 1998 work Stock Market Skirt connected the physical height of a skirt hemline with the real-time movement of the stock market. Her 1989 work Bicycle TV placed the viewer on a bicycle facing a video screen as the viewer cycled, then controlled their movement through scenes of the Canadian landscape projected before them.
Paterson curated the group show Disembodied at InterAccess Gallery in Toronto in 1997, which was one of the earliest exhibitions in Canada to include an online component.

Early life and education

Paterson was born in 1957. She attended the University of Toronto, beginning her education at Victoria College without the intention of becoming a media artist. While ultimately graduating with an honours degree from Victoria College in 1985, Paterson decided to interrupt her academic studies to pursue a four-year program at the Ontario College of Art. During this time, Paterson teamed up with fellow artists Derek Dowden, David Andrews, Graham Smith, and Ed Mowbray to found the Artculture Resource Centre, Toronto's first media gallery, in 1979.

Exhibitions

In 2018, Paterson's work was the subject of a retrospective entitled, The Future: Before, at InterAccess gallery in Toronto. The exhibition, curated by Shauna Jean Doherty, surveyed Paterson's 30 year contribution to media art in Canada and internationally.