LUC A. CHARETTE BIOGRAPHY
Luc A. Charette was born in Edmundston in 1952. He graduated from the Université de Moncton with a Bachelor of Arts, in 1976, and Bachelor of Education, in 1978. He also holds a certificate in advertising photography from the School of Modern Photography (Montreal, 1974), as well as a Post-graduate degree in Information Technology (Université de Moncton, 1998). He studied visual arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Université de Moncton (Bachelor of Visual Arts, 1985). In 1990, he attended a training course in marketing in the cultural industries at the Agence de coopération culturelle et technique with the École Internationale de Bordeaux, in France. He subsequently earned a Master of Arts with distinction (Media Arts) from the École des arts visuels (School of Visual Arts) at Université Laval, Québec, in 2003.
His first professional exhibition dates back to 1972 and was shown at the Galerie Colline in Edmundston. Since 1995, he has been seriously interested in media arts and web programming. In his multidisciplinary research, he explores reality (through artistic installations and artistic performances), the visual (through photography and paintings) and the virtual spaces (Internet and social networks). He is mostly interested in the links between popular imagery, time, duration, language systems, identity, representation and interactivity.
His work has earned him several grants from both the New Brunswick Arts Board and the Canada Council for the Arts. Since 1980, he has mounted more than 40 individual exhibitions and performances and has participated in more than 50 group exhibitions. He has received several awards including: Artist of the Year in visual arts at the Éloizes Awards in 2004 and 2014; winner of the contest for the creation of the Honourable Louis J. Robichaud Memorial in 2006; and, in 2009, finalist for the sculpture project of the sculpture garden of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery as well as the Strathbutler Award.
He was director-curator of the Louise and Reuben-Cohen Art Gallery of the Université de Moncton from 1988 to 2009. He was also a visual arts representative at the New Brunswick Arts Board (1991-1993) and President of the NB Acadian Association of Professional Artists (AAAPN-B, 1991-1993). He was general Director of the New Brunswick Arts Board (ARTSNB) in 2009-2010.
Since the beginning of 2011 he has devoted himself solely to artistic endeavours, working mainly in contemporary painting. He created a permanent museum sculpture installation in the atrium of the new Transportation and Discovery Museum, Place Resurgo, Moncton, in 2014. His most recent solo exhibition entitled "Dichotomy" was presented at the Centre des arts et de la culture de Dieppe in January 2015.
