The team at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery is saddened to hear about the loss of Canadian lens-based artist, educator and independent curator, April Hickox, who passed away on 15 August 2025.

April was an extraordinary artist. Her work has left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape and her generous spirit has impacted colleagues, students, curators, fellow artists, and collectors. Hickox studied photography and graphic design at Twickenham College of Technology in London, England and obtained an AOCA degree from OCAD U (when it was known as OCA). Over the course of a career spanning over 40 years, Hickox mined the distinctions between personal and public sites through film, video, photography, and installation. An active community leader, she was the Founding Director of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, as well as a founding member of Tenth Muse Studio and Artscape Toronto. She was also a member of the curatorial board of Art With Heart, Casey House. Additionally, April worked as Professor of Photography at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. She exhibited extensively across Canada and abroad, including an exhibition at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in 2017.

On a personal level, I remember my first introduction to her and her photographs in 1987 while working at the Winnipeg Art Gallery as Curator of Contemporary Art and Photography. I was struck by an early work, titled “So to Speak…”. Comprised of 15 photo-etchings that explored childhood memories, it foreshadowed the thread in her work throughout her career – work that embraced narrative histories and memories. The series depicts a young girl travelling through a maze and below each image is an accompanying text that is quoted from the French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) when he was 8 years old. It begins with “when I was a small human being not yet dominated by the adult’s philosophy of taking life as it is I was always looking for more for purer happiness. And yet from time to time I would meet it and hold it by the shoulders, so to speak and say now let’s stand very still both of us so I can look at you straight in the face with all the strength I have with my new eyes.” The Winnipeg Art Gallery purchased the work.

Recently, reflecting her ongoing concerns with current issues, notably, the environment, she dived into the natural world, specifically that on Toronto Island exploring notions of the wild and what we know wilderness to be. Over the years she has continued to document overlapping layers of human and natural histories, to demonstrate how, with our help, nature is reinvented. 

April Hickox’s unique ability to infuse the photograph with emotion was a gift and a rare one. For those of us who had the pleasure to work with her and her work throughout the years, how fortunate we are.  

Thank you April. We will miss you.

Images:
Header and Feature Images: Installation view of Index: Works from the Permanent Collection. On view at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 22 June to 17 September 2017. Curated by Crystal Mowry, Senior Curator. Photo by Robert McNair. 

April Hickox (Canadian, 1955-2025). Vantage Point: Portholes, 2009. Chromogenic print, 66 x 56 cm. Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery Permanent Collection: Gift of the Artist, 2012. © The Estate of April Hickox.