Christopher McNamara

Christopher McNamara is an award-winning film and video artist who creates both single channel works as well as sound and video installations and performances. He is the recipient of numerous Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council Grants including a Joan Chalmers Foundation grant. His work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout Canada including Western Front in Vancouver, YYZ and Mercer Union in Toronto, Galerie B 312 in Montréal, the Khyber Art Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Macintosh gallery in London, Ontario, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and at the Art Gallery of Windsor. More recently McNamara had a solo exhibition at Binz 39 in Zürich, Switzerland, was featured in the Shrinking Cities Project at Kunst Werke in Berlin. In June 2009 he presented “Some More Cities” at the Sherwell Art Centre in Plymouth, UK. His video, Establishing Shots premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and was subsequently screened at Independent Film Festival Boston, the Ann Arbor Film Festival and at the Projection Gallery in Liverpool, UK. He has performed at international festivals including Mutek (Montréal), Spark (Minneapolis) and Detroit Electronic Music Festival (Detroit).

His projects include “On Location” – a 4 screen media installation as part of the 50th Anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival at Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, “Amulet City” (a performance) at Mutek in Montréal (his third appearance there) and “Falling In Place” – a solo exhibition at the Thames Art Gallery (Chatham, ON) and at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, ON). In the Fall of 2023, his solo exhibition “Vivid Against the Little, Soft Cities” opens at Museum London, in London, Ontario. Concurrently, he will premiere “’It Don’t Exist’: Imagining the City Within and Beyond the Archive” at Art Windsor Essex in Windsor, Ontario.

At the end of September, 2013, McNamara got word that the exhibition he was featured in, "Border Cultures" at the Art Gallery of Windsor, received "Exhibition of the Year" recognition from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. It was the first time in several decades that the Art Gallery of Windsor was recognized like this. 

In addition to his video work, McNamara has produced work with with several distinct audio art collectives:  Thinkbox, Nospectacle, Noiseborder Ensemble and Shorelights.  McNamara is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan where he teaches courses in Animation, Digital Media, and experimental Media production

Field(s) of Study

• New media
• Video installation
• Experimental film
• Electronic music and performance