Tom Burrows, Skwat Doc (detail), 1981-82
photocopy on board
Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Gift of the artist, 1999.
$1,000 for the winning entry. Every full-time undergraduate student at UBC is invited to participate in an essay contest that considers the relationship between form and contested space. The 6th Annual Essay Prize is occasioned by the exhibition Tom Burrows and related symposium Spatial Politics and the City. The Belkin poses the questions, you provide the answers.
Burrows’ work reflects on the connections between the spaces of political and artistic practice. His home and sculptural works on the Maplewood Mudflats, his documentation of squatting communities, and his ongoing production of abstract works share an attention to the ways socially meaningful forms emerge out of engagement with material processes.
We invite you to write an essay addressing some of the following questions: How have various communities shaped Vancouver’s public spaces? What kinds of artistic forms do widespread migration and conflict create and demand? What does it mean to build or create on land that does not belong to most of its dwellers? What possibilities do practices of dissent, such as Vancouver’s long history of squatting, generate for thinking about a city for which sovereignty and land title are contested? Your essay should articulate how the exhibition provides a lens for a (re)consideration of these issues.
Be sure to attend the March 27 symposium Spatial Politics and the City at the Liu Institute for Global Issues for a discussion of these issues by an international panel of speakers.
The Guidelines:
Essays must be no longer than 1,000 words in length and submitted to the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery no later than 4:00 pm on Friday, April 17, 2015. Submissions must be made with a separate page indicating: 1) full name, 2) student number, 3) email, 4) telephone.
Contestants must be full-time students registered in an undergraduate program at the University of British Columbia.
View Tom Burrows’ Artist Talk from January 10
The exhibition by Vancouver/Hornby Island artist Tom Burrows presents work by the artist from his early career to the present. The exhibition is a timely refocusing of attention on an artist who has made an immense contribution to the development of art in Vancouver, not only as an artist but as an educator and activist as well—in 1975 he received a United Nations commission to document squatters communities in Europe, Africa and Asia, a work that is now in the Belkin’s collection. Burrows first rose to prominence in the late-1960s and was included in several exhibitions at the UBC Fine Arts Library, an institution that was seminal in encouraging Vancouver’s growing and now vibrant art community. Burrows’ work, which demonstrates an interest in process and new materials, has encompassed a number of disciplines including sculpture, early performance art, video, painting and iconic hand-built houses on the Maplewood Mudflats and Hornby Island. Currently most well known for his innovative monochromatic cast resin “paintings/sculptures” produced during the last forty-five years, this exhibition examines the full breadth of his career with works from the Belkin’s permanent collection and others borrowed from the artist, collectors and public institutions.
[more]This symposium is occasioned by the Tom Burrows exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Since the 1960s, Burrows’ work has reflected on the connections between the spaces of political and artistic/material practice. His home and sculptural works on the Maplewood Mudflats, his documentation of squatting communities in Africa, Asia and Europe, and his ongoing production of abstract works in resin and porcelain share an attention to the ways in which socially meaningful forms emerge out of engagement with, and intervention in, spatial and material processes. The symposium will take up some issues suggested by such attention in two panels.
[more]Join us at the Bau-Xi Gallery as we celebrate the launch of Tom Burrows. The retrospective on one of the most influential artists in the West Coast art scene over the past forty years, Tom Burrows, and the exhibition that preceded the book, presents work by the artist from his early career to the present.
[more]Once again, we are pleased to welcome the UBC Contemporary Players to the Belkin Art Gallery for a concert inspired by the exhibition Tom Burrows.
[more]Join leading UBC scholars, artists, curators and critics in a series of midday conversations. In this series, guests will address Tom Burrows, an exhibition of works by the Vancouver/Hornby Island artist from his early career to the present.
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