John Oswald - Media Artist

"It is fortunate that the Governor General should recognize achievements in the 'media arts.' For it is only a term as open-ended in its compass as 'media' that could possibly serve to embrace the wildly multifarious yet utterly particular art of John Oswald. 'Media' is plural, denoting more than one medium. And a medium, in its most basic sense, is a means, any means, of effecting or conveying something, anything. Medium is also a poetically apt word to invoke in the case of John Oswald, as it is directly derived from the Latin word meaning 'the one in the middle.' Oswald throws himself into the middle, or, more correctly, many, many middles."