In his roles as a curator and primarily as an artist, Michael Morris has been a key figure of the west coast art scene since the 1960s and his contribution to the development of Vancouver as a contemporary art city has been immense. Morris was engaged with Concrete Poetry in the 1960s. The Concrete Poetry movement was perhaps the first global art movement, springing up in South and North America, Japan and Europe in the mid to late 1950s.
Recognizing the potential of Concrete Poetry as an area that included design, poetry, architecture, art and communications, Morris co-curated an important exhibition of Concrete Poetry at the University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery in 1969. It presented a selection of Morris’ large “Letter” paintings and a selection of international concrete poetry from the period.
During this time, Morris was also working on his most ambitious series of paintings, Letters (produced from 1967 to 1969) —for the first time all seven are presented in this exhibition. Composed of vertical bands of gradated colour and divided into triptychs by Plexiglas and concave mirror insets, the Letter Paintings were named after the “Letter” column in Art International magazine. (Morris’ work had been discussed in “Los Angeles Letter” in the December 1967 issue.) Paris, London, New York, Peking, Rome, Los Angeles, Madrid; there are seven large paintings plus a study for the largest, New York Letter. The study has never been exhibited in Vancouver.
The titles give a sense of Morris’ growing interest in the mail art network and in the possibilities of networks of peripheries and centres. They positioned the genre of painting against the metaphor of communication, which at the time were agitated by Marshall McLuhan’s declarations of the paradigm shift coming with the digital era.
Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry also presents over 60 works by Morris and his mirror installation, Atlantis/Jericho (1970/2011). Approximately 100 items from the Belkin Art Gallery’s collection of over 2,000 Concrete Poetry materials (correspondence, ephemera, prints, posters, broadsheets, objects, books and catalogues) by Vancouver / Canadian artists such as bill bissett, bpNichol and Carole Itter will be exhibited.
In addition, works from the collection by Ugo Carrega, Henri Chopin, Lily Greenham, Jiri Kolar, Ferdinand Kriwet, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Steve McCaffery and Gerhard Rühm will be included in Letters. Some of these artists were part of the original 1969 Concrete Poetry exhibition and their works situate Morris and Vancouver’s links to the international movement.
Michael Morris is one of the most important architects of Vancouver’s contemporary scene and he received Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in the spring of 2011. Vancouver is fortunate in that there is much interest in the contemporary art history of the city in Vancouver and internationally.
Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry is co-curated by Scott Watson and Michael Turner. An exhibition catalogue with contributions by Scott Watson, Michael Turner, Jamie Hilder and William Wood will accompany the exhibition.
We thank Walter C. Koerner Library at the University of British Columbia and the Satellite Gallery for participating in this exhibition.
Works of art have been loaned by the Art Bank at the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, National Gallery of Canada, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery and private collections.
This project was made possible with the generous support of the Audain Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Vancouver Foundation, and the British Columbia Arts Council. We gratefully acknowledge the support of our Belkin Curator’s Forum members.
Installation view from Survey ‘69, exhibition at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in May-June 1969. Michael Morris, New York Letter, c. 1968, gelatin silver print, mirror, Plexiglas. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Purchase, Saidye and Samuel Bronfman Collection of Canadian Art. Photo: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Henry Koro.
Michael Morris, Los Angeles Letter, 1968
acrylic on canvas, mirror, plexiglas; 184 x 327 cm Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia Purchased with support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance program and the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, 2011.
At Koerner Library: Ferdinand Kriwet, Rundscheiben (Newsletter_, 1960/63, offset print on paper. Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Purchased with support from the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Acquisition Fund, 2010.
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Image Bank explores the artistic collaboration of Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov and originally Gary Lee-Nova, including their most spectacular works – extended performances with props, such as Colour Bar Research (1970-78) and Mr. Peanut’s mayoralty campaign (1974) in which Vincent Trasov as Mr. Peanut ran for mayor of Vancouver – alongside their extensive mail-art exchanges with other networkers such as Robert Filliou, General Idea, Ant Farm and Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School. [more information and purchase] -
Exhibition catalogue from Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry at the Belkin (13 January-8 April 2012) with essays by Jamie Hilder, David MacWilliam, Michael Turner, Scott Watson and William Wood; edited by Scott Watson and Jana Tyner. [more information and purchase] -
In conjunction with Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry All are welcome. Admission is free. General seating. SCHEDULE 1:00 pm Introductions Shelly Rosenblum, Curator of Academic Programs, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Michael Turner, Author and Curator Vancouver 1:30 pm Stephen Scobie, Poet and Scholar Victoria, BC “Summer Elephants: Ian Hamilton Finlay and Concrete Poetry” 2:30 pm Lori Emerson, Department of English University of Colorado, Boulder “A Typewriter is a Poem. A Poem is Not a Typewriter” 3:30 pm Coffee break 4:00 pm Liz Kotz Department of the History of Art University of California, Riverside “the kind of grid a typewriter produces in a very machine-like way” 5:00 pm Postscript Donato Mancini, Department of English, UBC
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We are pleased to welcome the UBC Contemporary Players to the Belkin Art Gallery for a concert inspired by the exhibition Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry. Directed by UBC School of Music faculty Drs. Corey Hamm and Paolo Bortolussi, the UBC Contemporary Players ensemble includes graduate and undergraduate students focusing on music and performance of our time. Programs blend masterworks by internationally acclaimed composers with exciting world premieres of works written expressly for the ensemble by UBC composition majors. All are welcome. Admission is free. Emergence Including new pieces composed and performed by UBC’s student new music ensemble. Jocelyn Morlock Theft – Waterclocks Naithan Bosse Pendulum Alyssa Aska All Roads Lead to the Great Path Olivier Messiaen 4tet for the end of time Paul Lee Broken Mirror Suite Daniel Marshall Le Rêve de Moise
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Image Bank explores the artistic collaboration of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov with others, including their most spectacular works – extended performances with props, such as Colour Bar Research (1970-78) and Mr. Peanut’s mayoralty campaign (1974) – alongside their extensive mail-art exchanges with other networkers such as Robert Filliou, Ant Farm and Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School. The Peanut campaign, in which Vincent Trasov as Mr. Peanut ran for mayor of Vancouver, mobilized the artists associated with the newly founded artist-run centre, the Western Front (est. 1973) and the exhibition includes many collaborations with and amongst these artists (Martin Bartlett, Hank Bull, Kate Craig, General Idea, Gary Lee-Nova, Glenn Lewis, Eric Metcalfe, John Mitchell and others). The exhibition pulls films, photographs, drawings, collages and other ephemera from the Belkin’s Morris/Trasov Archive to track the collaborative history of Image Bank. Founded in 1970 and lasting to 1978, Image Bank was a project initiated by Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov and Gary Lee-Nova that originated when they were all associated with the legendary Vancouver artist-run centre Intermedia. The exhibition reflects on a period of optimism where artists envisioned a non-hierarchical alternative to the world of art galleries and museums, where images and ideas could be freely exchanged through the international postal system thereby creating an open-ended and decentralized method of networking that presages social media.
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Michael Morris has been a key figure of the west coast art scene since the 1960s, and his contribution to the development of Vancouver as an important city for contemporary art has been immense. Satellite Gallery presents Palomar: Michael Morris, an exhibition of work by Morris that complements his larger exhibition at the Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry.
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“I am a citizen of art. Art is my country.” On 18 November 2022, we lost artist Michael Morris – painter, curator, photographer, performance artist – who has been a constant and defining thread through the gallery’s history. Through 11 January 2023, we are showing a selection of Michael’s video works from the archive and collection that imagine the garden, the forest and the shore as sites of research as well as repose.
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We are deeply saddened by the passing of Michael Morris, who died on 18 November 2022 at his home in Brentwood Bay, BC. Painter, curator, photographer, video and performance artist, we will remember Michael for his passion, endless enthusiasm, curiosity and warmth.
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