Vancouver artist Stan Douglas, who was the subject of a major retrospective last year in the German city of Stuttgart, is the 2008 winner of the Canada Council Bell Award in Video Art.

The $10,000 prize, first instituted in 1991, honours exceptional contributions by artists in the field of video art in Canada.

The Canada Council made the announcement Tuesday, saying in a statement that Douglas's art was "ground-breaking." His pieces explore "social histories played out through a complex cinematic and televisual language," the council said.

His works are often remakes of older films with text and elaborate projection setups.

The artist, born 1960 in Vancouver, was educated at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, and had his first solo show in 1981.

Since then, he has had his works at the 1995 Carnegie International, the 1995 Whitney Biennial, Documenta in 2005 and 2006, and the Venice Biennale in 2001 and 2005.

In 1999, a Douglas retrospective curated by the Vancouver Art Gallery travelled to Toronto, the Netherlands and Los Angeles.

From Sept. 15, 2007, until Jan. 6, 2008, the Wurttembergische Kunstverein and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Stuttgart held a comprehensive exhibition of Douglas's works.

Britain's prestigious Phaidon Press recently issued a book of his work and named him one of the top 20 contemporary artists in the world.

Other winners of the Canada Council Bell Award in Video Art have included John Greyson, Charles Guilbert, Robert Morin, Paul Wong, Lisa Steele, Zacharias Kunuk, Norman Cohn, Sara Diamond, Vera Frenkel and General Idea.