Tom Burrows (Canadian, b. 1940) has been a leading figure in Vancouver’s art scene since the 1960s. In addition to his photography and sculptural works with aluminum, fibreglass and porcelain, he is known for his research into squatting and homelessness. Burrows’ primary artistic focus since the late 1960s has been creating polymer cast panels, which he began experimenting with while attending Saint Martin’s School of Art in London (1967-69). Burrows returned to Vancouver where he became a founding faculty member at the University of British Columbia’s newly formed Bachelor of Fine Arts program, where he taught until 1974. This period coincides with him living at the Maplewood Mudflats in North Vancouver. In recent years, part of Burrows practice has been the creation of almost monochromatic panels that revive the modernist concern with the material nature of the object reduced to issues of surface, scale and the occupation of space. His work is represented by Bau-Xi Galleries, Toronto and Vancouver (since 1995) and Foster White Gallery, Seattle (since 2004); prior to that, his work was represented by the Isaacs Gallery, Toronto until it closed in the early 1990s. Burrows has had solo exhibitions in London, Rome, Tokyo, Berlin, New York and across Canada. His work is included in private, corporate and public collections in Europe, Asia and the Americas. The 2015 exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery was the first major survey of Burrows work.

Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).