Rodney Graham is an internationally acclaimed Canadian artist working in a post-modern realm. He is known primarily as a performance artist whose conceptual forms span video, photography, music, sculpture, drawing and installation.

William Rodney Graham was born January 16, 1949 in Abbotsford, British Columbia. As a youngster, his creative interests included listening to Rock and Roll music, learning to play the guitar and always loving to make things in art while at school. Upon graduation from McGee Secondary School in Vancouver in 1967, he enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia and embarked upon the formal study of art history and studio art. Strongly influenced by early twentieth century Dada and Surrealism and, by instructors Ian Wallace and Tom Burrows, he was always keen to challenge preconceived notions of art and push boundaries of established forms of expression.

Following university he embarked upon an art career pursuing his unique and creative vision. He also nurtured his love of music and formed a New Wave rock group UJ3RK5 with fellow artists Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace and writer William Gibson. As a conceptual artist exploring the human experience he became fascinated by the optics of light and seeing. He explored pin-hole cameras and researched the Camera Obscura, an ancient scientific device which inverts imagery. His interest in this device continues to this day and has become the focus of much of his work in photography. While his art has taken many forms since the late 1970s, upside down imagery has become a personal metaphor to his view of the modern world.

Rodney's conceptual work reached a major turning point at the skulpturen projekte in Munster, Germany in 1987 and from that time, has received prominent recognition world wide. He is a prolific creator and has exhibited a wide range of art forms. His work can be found in numerous major private and public collections in North America and in Europe including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Van Abbe Museum in the Netherlands. He has received many honours including being selected to represent Canada in the prestigious Venice Biennale in 1997. He also received an honourary Doctorate from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2002. Rodney Graham currently lives and works in Vancouver, BC.