Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
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Thaddeus Hołownia is a 2025 winner of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
Video directed by Matthew Brown.
A presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm’s-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) “to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.”
For more information, visit https://en.ggarts.ca.
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Transcript:
Thaddeus Holownia shows us with his work how to fix TIME…
Holownia has made time visible. You see time’s effect.
Meeka Walsh
My first exposure to the Tantramar marshes in the upper Bay of Fundy came through the window of a train ride coming from Moncton to Sackville. I was observing the landscape going by through the Memramcook Valley and then opening up to the broader Bay of Fundy tidal flats in Sackville. And I thought to myself, this could be a place where I could use my horizontal camera viewpoint to capture something that I think is very, very unique.
Working in what you termed ‘slow photography,’ and I use that term as well. It means that you don’t make very many photographs, but the ones you make have been resolved pretty clearly through observing something not just in the moment, but maybe through the course of time. The Rockland Bridge series, for instance, relies on a 20-year period of time where that structure was something that I could photograph, and through the element of time acting on those structures, that being the tides coming in and out. And that force of nature is, I think, essentially unstoppable.
Another project that I’ve worked on that relied on time was observing the backyard of where I live in Jolicure, and using the Jolicure Pond, which was a human-made pond on the marsh. That landscape essentially unfolds in a different way every single day for eternity.
The Dykelands is an odd landscape in that it’s very, very nondescript when you drive through at 100 kilometres an hour. But, in fact, if you began to examine it in detail, there is an extraordinary landscape to be explored. My attraction to it has been that its changes are incremental in time. And if you’re a close observer of the natural world, they can be mundane, but they can also be extremely profound.
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Please like this video and subscribe to support the arts in Canada.
Thaddeus Hołownia is a 2025 winner of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
Video directed by Matthew Brown.
A presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm’s-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) “to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.”
For more information, visit https://en.ggarts.ca.
****
Transcript:
Thaddeus Holownia shows us with his work how to fix TIME…
Holownia has made time visible. You see time’s effect.
Meeka Walsh
My first exposure to the Tantramar marshes in the upper Bay of Fundy came through the window of a train ride coming from Moncton to Sackville. I was observing the landscape going by through the Memramcook Valley and then opening up to the broader Bay of Fundy tidal flats in Sackville. And I thought to myself, this could be a place where I could use my horizontal camera viewpoint to capture something that I think is very, very unique.
Working in what you termed ‘slow photography,’ and I use that term as well. It means that you don’t make very many photographs, but the ones you make have been resolved pretty clearly through observing something not just in the moment, but maybe through the course of time. The Rockland Bridge series, for instance, relies on a 20-year period of time where that structure was something that I could photograph, and through the element of time acting on those structures, that being the tides coming in and out. And that force of nature is, I think, essentially unstoppable.
Another project that I’ve worked on that relied on time was observing the backyard of where I live in Jolicure, and using the Jolicure Pond, which was a human-made pond on the marsh. That landscape essentially unfolds in a different way every single day for eternity.
The Dykelands is an odd landscape in that it’s very, very nondescript when you drive through at 100 kilometres an hour. But, in fact, if you began to examine it in detail, there is an extraordinary landscape to be explored. My attraction to it has been that its changes are incremental in time. And if you’re a close observer of the natural world, they can be mundane, but they can also be extremely profound.
#GGArts2025 #ThaddeusHolownia #CanadaCouncil
Connect with us on social media:
Canada Council for the Arts
Instagram - instagram.com/canada.council
Facebook - facebook.com/canadacouncil
X - twitter.com/CanadaCouncil
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/canada-council-for-the-arts
Website - canadacouncil.ca
Art Bank
Instagram - instagram.com/artbank_banquedart
Facebook - facebook.com/CCartbank
YouTube - youtube.com/watch?v=x9fGIx7hZYk
Website - artbank.ca
CCUNESCO - Canadian Commission for UNESCO
Instagram - instagram.com/ccunesco
X - twitter.com/CCUNESCO
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/canadian-commission-for-unesco
Website - en.ccunesco.ca
