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Tall trees draw renowned artist to Saanich

Jan 16 2018/in News Coverage

The tall trees of Vancouver Island have drawn renowned visual artist Kelly Richardson to relocate from England.

Richardson was a lecturer at New Castle University the last 14 years, and was here to speak at the University of Victoria last year. During that trip she was brought to Avatar Grove, as she always visits the most unique and surreal natural landscapes whenever she travels.

Richardson’s known for hyper-real digital films and has been shown in North America, Asia and Europe, including the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in Canada.

“I was overwhelmed by the fact [Avatar Grove] exists at all,” Richardson said. “When I learned there was a position coming up at UVic, I groaned, because I was very happy in England, but I was so overwhelmed by [the visit] I had to put my name in for the job, and now we’re here.”

Richardson’s now settled in Saanichton and teaches a full schedule of courses as an associate professor of visual arts courses at UVic.

She’s also wasted little time in pairing her move to the South Island with a visual arts project on the tall trees. Richardson is one of five artists commissioned to produce a large-format digital film short for the 50th anniversary of the invention of IMAX. For that, Richardson will partner with cinematographer Christian Kroitor (grandson of IMAX inventor Roman Kroitor). They’ll focus on the Island’s famed old-growth and ancient forests near Port Renfrew.

It is also Kroitor who is commissioning the IMAX project, called XL-Outer Worlds, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the invention of IMAX, set to tour IMAX theatres in 2019. The tall trees keep with the larger-than-life imagery IMAX.

Richardson’s multimedia work generally starts with her visiting a natural landscape that stands out and shooting it with her camera.

From there she creates video installations for museum or gallery scenarios on three big screens, big enough that viewers can immerse themselves in it. XL-Outer Worlds is her first time creating something or the massive IMAX screen. She’ll also bring the works into a the gallery or museum scenario, but this time it’ll be even bigger, with five screens, she said.

What marks Richardson’s work is the addition of other works that turn the images into something else, always keeping with an environmental theme, such as a proposed future landscape.

“There’s always multiple ways to read it, so sometimes it’s terrifying, and sometimes it’s positive,” Richardson said. “In this case, I’ll focus on implications of [human consumption on ancient forests], and what’s too much in terms of nature conversation. We’re still cutting a hectare of old growth every year, which is quite disturbing because it’s non-renewable.”

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Capturing the art of nature and change

Jan 16 2018/in News Coverage

Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests have inspired acclaimed digital artist Kelly Richardson to move to Victoria, to be closer to the inspiration the ancient stands of trees provide.

In particular, she has had her eye on Port Renfrew — dubbed the “tall-tree capital” of Canada — and is featuring it in a digital-art creation that will be shown at Imax theatres as part of a film series. The series will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Imax’s invention.

The Ontario-born Richardson is working as an associate professor of visual arts at the University of Victoria, and before that she was a lecturer in fine arts at Newcastle University in northern England.

Richardson, 45, said a visit to Victoria in 2016 to give a talk at UVic featured a trip to the Port Renfrew area’s Avatar Grove, which had a big influence on her decision to move here.

She said she was “phenomenally moved” at the sight of the grove.

The move to Victoria fell into place when there was a job opportunity at UVic.

“I had been living in England for 14 years,” Richardson said. “I really loved my life in the U.K., I was not looking to leave.”

But she said she could not pass up the opportunity to live close to Vancouver Island’s forests, something that fits with the basis of her art.

“Most of my projects focus on environmental issues, and I work with landscapes, always as a starting point in the works.”

Richardson said she is best known for creating large-scale video installations, with a video camera and a single-lens reflex camera her basic tools.

“The best way to describe them is that they’re moving pictures or paintings,” she said. “They’re not still images, but they are environments that viewers feel as though they can walk within.

“Everything’s moving, and then there’s sound that accompanies each video, which helps to convince the viewer of where they are.”

Special effects are added to achieve the final result, she said, and offered some examples.

“There’s images from a desert landscape where I’ve inserted rockets, what look like rockets endlessly leaving what is presumed to be planet Earth. Another image has yellow tendrils of light in it that were inserted, so it looks like either a toxic spill of some description or a bioluminescent life form that either existed in the past or might exist in the future.

“So there’s always multiple ways to read it.”

Conservation is a big part of her message, Richardson said.

“The work gets out there into the world, and on the one hand I want it to be enjoyable as artwork, but I want it to be more than that as well,” she said. “Environmentally, with climate change and the vast changes that we’ve made since the Industrial Revolution, we’re facing incredibly uncertain futures as a result.

“What I want people to do is to think about where we’re heading and why.”

Richardson’s art has an international following.

“I tend to show in museums around the world or festivals like the Sundance Film Festival.”

She has also been featured in many solo and group exhibitions, and is part of collections at such sites as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

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New Visual Arts Professor Creates Avatar Grove Film Project

Jan 12 2018/in News Coverage

Internationally acclaimed artist Kelly Richardson, a new professor in UVic’s Department of Visual Arts, is bringing the old-growth forests near Port Renfrew sharply into focus with a new digital art project.

Created with the participation of the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), Richardson’s large-format film will be shot in July at Port Renfrew’s Avatar Grove (a popular nickname for its Nuu-cha-nulth Pacheedaht name of T’l’oqwxwat) by Christian Kroitor, the grandson of IMAX inventor Roman Kroitor, and released on IMAX screens across Canada next year.

The Ontario-born artist, who has been living in the UK since 2003 and teaching at Newcastle University in northeastern England since 2013, cites proximity to Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests as one of the reasons she moved to Victoria and accepted the position at UVic.

New project to be featured as part of IMAX 50th anniversary
Richardson and four other Canadian media artists—Michael Snow, Oliver Husain, Lisa Jackson and Leila Sujir— are featured in the upcoming XL-Outer Worlds project which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the IMAX, a Canadian invention by Roman Kroitor.

XL-Outer Worlds focuses on short films creating a larger-than-life landscape that forms an outer world.

Home to spectacular stands of old-growth trees
Richardson decided to move to Vancouver Island specifically upon seeing BC’s old-growth forests firsthand during her time as a UVic Visiting Artist in the fall of 2016.

“I was overwhelmed by my experience of those ancient stands, which was a huge influence in my decision to apply for a professorship at UVic,” says Richardson. “I couldn’t believe those ancient stands still exist at all anywhere in the world, let alone here. My upcoming projects will feature the old-growth forests in this region and I hope I can contribute to efforts to raise awareness about their outstanding beauty and the plight to protect what remains.”

Known for creating hyper-real digital films of rich and complex landscapes manipulated using CGI, animation and sound, Richardson’s work fuses 19th century painting, 20th century cinema and 21st century scientific inquiries. She creates works with strong environmental themes, asking viewers to consider what the future might look like if we continue on our current trajectory of global environmental crisis.

“It’s not just the sheer size but it’s actually how you feel in front of these ancient, ancient trees.” – Kelly Richardson, visual arts prof

In 2017, Richardson was involved in 14 solo and group exhibitions across Canada and in China, France, the UK and the US. Her video installations have been included in the Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival and she was previously honoured at the Americans for the Arts’ National Arts Awards alongside Robert Redford, Salman Rushdie and fellow artist Ed Ruscha.

Richardson’s old-growth project will be created with the participation of the AFA which, together with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, spearheaded the protection of Avatar Grove / T’l’oqwxwat located in the Pacheedaht First Nations’ traditional territory and home to one of the most spectacular and easily accessible stands of monumental old-growth trees in BC.

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CBC: Panel Appointed to Map B.C.’s Old-Growth Forests Say Province Is Failing to Save Them

Mar 16 2026

Every member of a former panel the BC government appointed to identify old-growth for potential protection in 2021 now says they're concerned about continued logging in those same rare and "irreplaceable" forests.

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NOW HIRING: Forest Campaigner

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The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) is hiring a passionate Forest Campaigner to join our team and help protect old-growth forests in BC!

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Budget 2026 Shortchanges Nature Protection and Sustainable Forestry Transition At a Critical Time for British Columbia

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