Bio
Based in Mi’kma’ki / Nova Scotia, Ian Funke-McKay attended NSCAD University (BFA 2014). With a focus on painting, he builds specialized emblems, figurines, and displays, that are combined for exhibition purposes. Curatorial projects include Invisible Bright Touch, Cork Street Project Space, Halifax, NS, and Stack Effect 9, Concordia University, Montreal, QC. Recent exhibitions include in the garden at the Eltuek Arts Centre, Sydney, Nova Scotia. Local and international residencies include the Visual + Digital Arts program at The Banff Centre (2018), CFAT Media Arts Scholarship (2018), The Vermont Studio Center (2017), and the Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution, NY (2014). From 2019-2024 he worked as Arts Programming Director at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts. His projects have received the support of Arts Nova Scotia, and Canada Council for the Arts.
“Ian Funke-McKay is a Nova Scotia-based artist whose installation practice combines a variety of mediums in a synthesis of medieval and contemporary display. Drawing upon heraldic motifs, the interwoven patterns of historical tapestry and costume, and the energy of saturated colour, Funke-McKay produces images and signs for a new visual field in which past energies resonate within the present. His colourful and faceted arrays and forms echo the worlds of computer-generated imaging and video-game animations, aspiring to fuse the future-oriented legacies of abstract painting with a “cryptic terrain of pre-Renaissance motifs” in moments that unfold in a nonlinear fashion.”
-Pan Wendt, Curator, Confederation Centre of the Arts, 2019.
For inquires and collaborations, please contact: ian@ianfunkemckay.com
