Lycia Trouton is a multi-award winning artist and contemporary art historian. Her work insightfully grasps the exploration of liminal spaces with both intellectual rigour and a desire to bring humaneness to light. As a freelance sculptor, writer-critic, curator, presenter and university lecturer, Dr. Trouton has had the opportunity to build community through her art. Her commemorative works, research and teaching sparks excitement and breeds innovation.
Lycia’s focus is often on the creation of work that offers an allusion to the past and reveals a discussion of social themes. With giant earthworks, land art creations, and site-specific, touring sculpture, she has managed to stretch our imagination with sheer physicality. Her exhibitions emphasize the peculiarity and preciousness of objects and the archival necessity to commemorate the genius of a story retold.
Born in a particular area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Lycia experienced her early life in a region that held a quarter of the cumulative total deaths as a result of The Northern Ireland Troubles. Her family (partly because of her maternal grandfather’s involvement in the post World War II government from 1958-72) immigrated to Canada’s West Coast in 1970 and made their home in Vancouver, Canada. From these experiences, Trouton grew her interdisciplinary arts practice.
Her lived childhood, witnessing the spectre of internecine war, led Trouton to conceptualize and produce her major life’s work: a non-traditional memorial, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. Entitled the (Irish) Linen Memorial, this work is a hand-sewn chronological Names List which has toured worldwide for twenty years, winning acclaim in the process.
While she currently lives and works on Vancouver Island in Canada’s Pacific Northwest, Dr. Trouton lectured and held artist residencies in the UK, USA, South America, Asia and Australia. You can find her current land art and public art in the Seattle area and in her Northern Ireland birthplace.
Trouton currently holds an Associate Fellowship at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, at the University of Victoria, Canada, after positions such as the Head of Art and Design History and Theory at the School of Visual & Performing Arts, University of Tasmania (UTAS) and at one of the dozen UNESCO-initiated Latin American Social Sciences Institutes (F.L.A.C.S.O.) in the history and cultural anthropology department. She gained her Doctorate of Creative Arts (studio and contemporary history/theory) from the University of Wollongong, near Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, in late 2005, after being a working artist for a decade in Seattle and Vancouver. Her Masters (MFA) in Sculpture, in 1991, was from the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA and her BFA (Honours) in Sculpture from the rigorous Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania,1988 and pre-college at Otis-Parsons Design School, Los Angeles and Emily Carr University.
Lycia Trouton continues to exhibit internationally. Her work has been shown at Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China, Galerie Camille, Detroit, The Art Gallery of Grande Prairie in Northern Alberta, The Long Gallery at the Northern Ireland Parliament Buildings, Stormont, Belfast, Derry Central, Belfast Central and Linen Hall Libraries, N. Ireland, Queen’s University, Belfast, Corrymeela Community (N. Ireland’s oldest Peace and Reconciliation organisation), The United World College for Peace, Canada, and Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan, Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre, the University of Wollongong, and Stanley Park, Vancouver, Canada. Her work is held in digital collections including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.