Heather Nicol is a Toronto-based artist whose practice includes immersive sound installation, sculpture, performance and participatory actions. Her focus is large-scale site-specific interventions which explore the architectural, sonic, historic and operational conditions of her locations. These have included enormous concourse atriums, urban infrastructure sites, rail terminus (active as well as decommissioned), a storage locker facility, performance venue lobbies and theatres, and a French Chateau. Throughout her interdisciplinary practice, she has worked with actors, musicians, choreographers, educators and fabricators.
Nicol has generated site-driven exhibitions as an independent curator / producer. She engaged scores of artists and welcomed thousands of attendees through the acclaimed exhibitions makingROOM (Toronto, 2006) in a 30,000 square foot shuttered sweatshop, and Art School (dismissed) (Toronto, 2010), in a decommissioned public school. Other curatorial activities have included gallery exhibitions, writing for exhibition catalogues, and exploring the boundaries with cross disciplinary “curatorial installations.
Nicol has engaged with children, the elderly, migrant youth, people living with Parkinson’s disease, and passers-by in a variety of forums: interactive artworks, a 60 person “flash mob”, and participatory sound-making events and performances.