Portrait of Resistance: The Art & Activism of Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge (2011) Roz Owen and Jim Miller 72 minutes
Join us on Saturday, April 26 for a screening of Roz Owen’s and Jim Miller’s documentary feature Portrait of Resistance: The Art & Activism of Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge. This wide ranging documentary unpacks the fascinating careers and lives of two of WAHC’s founding members, and explores the activism that was central to their personal lives and creative practice. This screening is part of a series of events celebrating May Day. Join us for a tour of the Condé Memorial Collection on April 24th and a May Day Picnic on May 1, presented in partnership with the HDLC. Thank you very much to our co-presenters McMaster Museum of Art. Following the screening there will be a Q+A with the filmmakers and Karl Beveridge. Save your spot today! This screening is part of WAHC’s 2025 May Day programing. If you’re interested in our other events check out the Tour of the Conde Memorial Collection on April 24th and our May Day Picnic on May 1st presented in partnership with the HDLC.PORTRAIT OF RESISTANCE: The Art &Activism of Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge.
Carole Condé and her surviving partner Karl Beveridge began making art for social change in the mid 1970s. As the wealth-divide and environmental crises persist and grow, the world is catching up to their ideas and collaborative vision. Inspired by their playful with and visual innovations, PORTRAIT OF RESISTANCE intimately captures Condé and Beveridge as they create provocative staged photographs — about the environment, the rights of workers and the plague of global financial crises.
Filmmakers, Roz Owen and Jim Miller, were sparked to make Portrait of Resistance in
early 2007 when they glimpsed a new project their friends Carole and Karl were working
on. Documenting the artists creating The Fall of Water marked the beginning of a five
year film project.
Born in the UK, then later moving to Toronto as a girl, Roz Owen is an award winning
Canadian filmmaker working as a writer/director/producer in both documentary and
drama. Her path into filmmaking began when she was student at NSCAD. She wanted
to a painter until she realized her works were like storyboards. Roz picked up a Bolex to
make her first film and has never looked back. Roz’s career has involved making
several acclaimed short films, directing documentary and drama for television, as well
as developing and making feature films. Her feature drama TROUBLE IN THE
GARDEN premiered in theatres in 2019, and on CBC GEM in 2020, is available in 65
countries on Prime Video. Currently Roz Owen and Jim Miller are working to bring two
feature film projects to screen. They are also developing BEGIN AGAIN a comedic
drama series for television.
Jim Miller is a producer, editor, and artist with an activist focus on community
engagement. A highlight of Jim’s earlier individual work as a visual artist is Poison Pen:
A Story of Wrongful Dismissal (1986). This photo installation about a loyal Kellogs
employee and her family toured galleries across Canada and the UK. Jim is recognized
for award-winning works in a range of media; many made with his long-time partner,
producer-writer-director Roz Owen. Their recent award-winning feature drama, Trouble
In the Garden (2019) had its national broadcast premiere in November 2020 on CBC,
and is now streaming world-wide on Prime Video. In 2016, four years after Portrait of
Resistance was released, Jim organized and presented Public Exposures, a five-galley
exhibition showing the 40-year retrospective of Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge’s
pioneering work. During the pandemic Jim collaborated with Carole and Karl to make
the video VIRULENCE. Jim and Roz Owen are currently developing several new
projects.
Karl Beveridge is a prolific contemporary-artist with a career spanning over five decades. Prior to her passing in 2024, Karl worked alongside his partner in life and art, Carole Condé. Together they developed a singular artistic practice that responded to pressing social and political issues.
Early in their careers Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge moved to New York City in 1969 from Toronto, and soon were at the centre of the burgeoning conceptual art movement. In 1975, they joined the Art & Language journal The Fox (with Joseph Kosuth and Ian Burn) and picketed the Museum of Modern Art to protest its lack of inclusion of women artists, while critiquing the apolitical minimalism of Donald Judd. This ferment culminated in a major museum show, It’s Still Privileged Art, at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1976, just prior to the artists’ return to Toronto in1977.
Over fifty solo exhibitions of Condé and Beveridge’s work have been presented at major museums and art spaces on four continents, including: the Institute of Contemporary Art (London, UK); Museum Folkswang (Germany); George Meany Centre (Washington); Dazibao Gallery (Montreal); Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires); Art Gallery of Edmonton; and the Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney).
Equally, and congruent with the artists’ commitment to accessibility, their work has been displayed in a host of non-art and public settings, such as union halls, billboards, bus shelters and bookworks.
Throughout his career he has been an avid supporter of artists rights and was part of the volunteer committee that helped establish the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre in 1995.
In 2022 he and Carole received the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
