About Rita McKeough
Rita McKeough is a performance and installation artist and musician. Born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, on the traditional and unceded land of the Mi’kmaq people, McKeough received her BFA from the University of Calgary and MFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, Halifax. McKeough works from a feminist perspective and her recent work has focused on the impact of urban development and resource extraction on the lives and habitat of plants and animals. Rita is known for her large-scale, multilayered installations and performances often comprised of complex audio works and electronic elements. McKeough uses sound as a medium to articulate forces of resistance, giving voice and agency to her subjects.
As a musician, McKeough is a drummer and has been a member of a number of bands dating back to the late 1970s including The Permuters, Sit Com, Mode d’empoli, Almost Even, Demi Monde, Simian Crease, Confidence Band, Books All Over the Bed and most recently Sleepy Panther.
Rita McKeough has shown across Canada and the USA in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Remediation Room (2022–ongoing), EMMEDIA, Calgary and online; darkness is as deep as the darkness is (2020) Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; dig as deep as the darkness (2019) Richmond Art Gallery; Veins (2018) OBORO, Montreal; and Oh, Canada (2015) MASS MoCA, North Adams. McKeough was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, Canada Council for the Arts (2009). Her work has been featured in Radio Rethink: Art Sound and Transmission (Banff Centre Press, 1994), Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women (YYZ Books, Toronto, 2004) and the monograph Rita McKeough: Works (EMMEDIA, TRUCK Contemporary Art and Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival Society, Calgary, 2018) as well as many articles and reviews in Canadian Art, C Magazine, Galleries West, and Sculpture Magazine among others.
Currently, McKeough is Associate Professor of Sculpture and Media Arts at Alberta University of the Arts (formerly Alberta College of Art and Design), Calgary, based on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, and Métis Nation (Region 3) in Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta. McKeough credits the support and assistance of her community in the production of her work. As an educator, McKeough is grateful to have worked with many extraordinary students and colleagues throughout her teaching career.
About Frank McKeough
Frank McKeough was born in Afton, Nova Scotia in 1909. As a young man he worked as a lobster fisherman in Bayfield, Nova Scotia and loved to be on the water. McKeough served in World War II on the front lines as a surveyor and eventually at the rank of sergeant, marrying his wife Molly MacPherson prior to departing for overseas. Following World War II, he moved to Antigonish, Nova Scotia where his daughters, Rita and Karen McKeough grew up until the family moved to Vancouver in 1957. McKeough began to carve later in life, during his last job when living in Masset, Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. Following the passing of Molly McPherson, he moved to Salt Spring Island where he lived for twenty-two years, and where McKeough spent a significant amount of time carving before his passing in 1997.
McKeough largely used materials for his sculptures that he found while beach combing, such as driftwood. He also often used cork buoys given to him by local fishermen as the basis for his animal sculptures. McKeough decided at a certain point to gift all of his work and generously shared his sculptures and the wooden chains he carved with children in hospital wards in Alberta and British Columbia, his children Rita and Karen, his grandchildren, and adults and kids alike who expressed interest in his pieces.
