Mary Kavanagh
Visual Artist
Professor of Art
Board of Governors Research Chair, Tier I in Fine Arts
University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
Member, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, Academy of Arts and Humanities
Mary Kavanagh is a Canadian visual artist, Professor of Art, and Board of Governors Research Chair (Tier I in Fine Arts) at the University of Lethbridge. Since the mid-2000s, her practice has developed through sustained fieldwork—including military embeds and engagement with remote and restricted sites—alongside residencies, archival research, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally.
Working with photography, moving image, drawing, and installation, Kavanagh investigates sites shaped by nuclear colonialism, militarization, and industrial extraction. Her practice engages collecting, memory, inscription, and visibility, approaching the archive as material evidence bound to histories and territories. This research is articulated through formally restrained, spatial, and sensory works. Major projects include Daughters of Uranium, Seven Skies of Maralinga, Trinity, Track of Interest, and Atomic Suite. In her recent installation Opera Obscura, two thousand blackened books give form to the accelerating loss of the material record.
Kavanagh’s research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. As Principal Investigator of a SSHRC Insight Grant, she undertook sustained fieldwork at the Trinity atomic bomb test site in New Mexico for an ongoing project examining atomic aftermath. Critical writing on her work has been published in art publications and scholarly journals including Esse, Arena, Ciel Variable, Canadian Art, Border Crossings, and Canadian Military History. Her work has also been discussed in War Art in Canada: A Critical History (Art Canada Institute, 2021), Through Post-Atomic Eyes (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), The Bomb in the Wilderness: Photography and the Nuclear Era in Canada (UBC Press, 2020), Voices: artists on art | 2017–1967 (TfT Works, 2020), and the monograph Mary Kavanagh | Daughters of Uranium (SAAG; Founders’ Gallery; Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 2020).
Kavanagh is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada’s Academy of Arts and Humanities and a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Mary Kavanagh is a Canadian visual artist, educator, and arts administrator. She is a Professor and Board of Governors Research Chair at the University of Lethbridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. For nearly thirty years, Kavanagh’s artwork has been exhibited across Canada and internationally.
Artist and research residencies have taken her to remote locations across the globe, including active military bases, weapons testing and research facilities, and sites of mining extraction and remediation. Immersion in places with complex or difficult histories has resulted in multi-faceted exhibitions that explore access to publicly held lands, institutions, and data. A decade-long investigation into the veiled story of nuclear armament resulted in multiple bodies of work including a travelling exhibition with publication, Daughters of Uranium, which encompasses drawing, sculpture, photography, moving image installation, and archival materials. She has recently returned from Maralinga in South Australia, site of the British Nuclear Testing Program (1952-1963). An exhibition and manuscript based on her research findings is in development.
Kavanagh has been the recipient of peer-reviewed grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She was Principal Investigator of a SSHRC Insight Grant focused on the Trinity atomic bomb test site in New Mexico. Her work has been the subject of over 50 critical reviews and essays, and has been featured in publications including War Art in Canada: A Critical History, Laura Brandon, Art Canada Institute Institut De L’Art Canada, 2021; Through Post-Atomic Eyes, John O’Brian and Claudette Lauzon, eds., McGill-Queens UP, 2020; and The Bomb in the Wilderness: Photography and the Nuclear Era in Canada, John O’Brian, UBC Press, 2020. Mary Kavanagh holds a BA in Art Studio from the University of Guelph, an MA in Art History from Western University, and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. In 2007 she was Visiting Professor at Hokkai-Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan, and in 2018 she was appointed Associate Member of the Documentary Media Research Centre (DMRC), School of Image Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Mary Kavanagh at Maralinga, South Australia, 2024
Photo credit: Merilyn Fairskye