Cathy Busby

Who is Cathy Busby?

Cathy Busby is Canadian artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has a PhD in Communication and was a Fulbright Scholar at New York University. She has an MA in Media Studies and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She has been exhibiting her work internationally over the past 20 years. She is an Adjunct Professor of visual art in the UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, on April 20, 1958, Busby is an artist who has a long-time interest in posters and printed matter and their potential for grassroots communication. She worked as an artist-activist in the 80’s and has had exhibitions in Berlin at the Emerson Gallery of posters collected in Halifax entitled The North End. Other recent exhibitions include Sorry, Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax and McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton; Totalled, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; Testdrive, eyelevelgallery, Halifax; How…, Gallery 101, Ottawa. Her work is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

One of Cathy Busby's best-known works, We Are Sorry, commemorated public apologies by Canadian and Australian heads of state to the Indian Residential School survivors in Canada and the Stolen Generations in Australia. While these landmark apologies had been relatively fleeting media moments when they were first delivered, We Are Sorry prolonged their public presence. In Melbourne, We Are Sorry took place outdoors as part of the Laneway Commissions and the following year it was presented in Eckhardt Hall at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in conjunction with the launch of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.