Collections

With a focus on the Canadian and British Columbian avant-garde, Vancouver’s post-war art history, and emerging local artists, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia holds one of the largest public collections of art in the province.

Since 1995, when the Fine Arts Gallery was rededicated the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the collections have developed considerably through a program of selected donations and the purchase of significant works of contemporary art produced by Canadian and international artists. The collections are a valuable resource for students, researchers and the general public.

The collections include PERMANENT and OUTDOOR art collections and ARCHIVES, searchable below.

1700s-2000s

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Collection

Search: https://belkin.pastperfectonline.com/

With a focus on the Canadian and British Columbian avant-garde, Vancouver’s post-war art history, and emerging local artists, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia holds one of the largest public collections of art in the province with some 3,250 works of art dating from the eighteenth century to the present.

The development of the collection predates the gallery. From the 1920s to the 1990s, the University received donations and commissioned portraits. In 1991, the UBC Fine Arts Gallery began to oversee the University Art Collection. Since 1995, when the Fine Arts Gallery was rededicated the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the Collection has developed considerably through a program of selected donations and the purchase of significant works of contemporary art produced by Canadian and international artists. The Collection is a valuable resource for students, researchers, and the general public.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program, Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, our Belkin Curator’s Forum members, and our donors who have generously gifted works of art to the collection or supported acquisition purchases. The Belkin’s Online Collection project was made possible with support from the UBC Faculty of Arts with additional project support from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre’s British Columbia History Digitization Program.

We gratefully acknowledge the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Museums Assistance Program for their support of the Gallery’s Rolled Storage Collections Solution project.
1938-1998

Jack Shadbolt: Works from the Collection

Search: http://shadbolt.belkin.ubc.ca/

One of the highlights of the Belkin Art Gallery’s Collection is a significant body of work by British Columbian artist, Jack Shadbolt (1909–1998). Over 490 collages, drawings, paintings, and prints dating from 1938 to 1998 are now available through www.shadbolt.belkin.ubc.ca. Featured as a stand-alone site, Jack Shadbolt: Works from the Collection includes essays about the work of Shadbolt by art historian Robert Linsley and by Scott Watson, Director and Curator of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Shadbolt is British Columbia’s most recognizable artist after Emily Carr. At the core of the Jack Shadbolt Collection are 320 drawings that were chosen by Shadbolt himself to represent his seventy year career.

Jack Shadbolt: Works from the Collection has been made possible with funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program through the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at The University of British Columbia.

Since the late 1950s, works of outdoor art have been collected by the University of British Columbia to enrich the campus environment. Together, these artworks give voice to multiple stories about the history of UBC and Vancouver, and are part of an ever-evolving narrative about art, space and place, and our own sense of ourselves. The University Art Committee, a diverse body of faculty, staff, students and additional members unaffiliated with the University, provides leadership on the acquisition, installation and maintenance of artwork on campus. With support from the staff at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Committee, the Curator of Outdoor Art develops the curatorial vision for the outdoor collection to ensure a place for art at UBC into the future.

2018

Esther Shalev-Gerz, The Shadow

By Esther Shalev-Gerz
100 x 25 metres, 24,000 concrete pavers

In The Shadow, Esther Shalev-Gerz embeds a ghostly silhouette of a first-growth Douglas fir across the expanse of University Commons Plaza, which is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. Pixelated through the use of differing shades of paving stones, The Shadow engages pedestrians through its varied texture and tone underfoot, yet does not reveal the entire form. As in the landscape, the totality of the tree can only be grasped from a distance: The Shadow requires a view from higher ground to be complete.

In the artist’s previous installations in public space, such as Monument Against Fascism (1986) and White Point/Meeting Point (2004), specific sites are explored through an investigation of the horizontal plane. Rather than extend forms into vertical space, The Shadow, like these earlier works, presents an absence as a hovering memory beneath our feet.

Each tree carries a unique testimony of its history and surroundings. As with most of what is now Vancouver, the old-growth forest on UBC’s Point Grey campus was logged heavily by settlers in the late 1800s. The Shadow reminds us of the scale of the trees that once existed on this site and speaks to the vast change that has taken place in a relatively short period of time.

History / Biography

Esther Shalev-Gerz is an internationally renowned artist. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, she was raised in Jerusalem, Israel and has been residing in Paris since 1984, spending her summers on Cortes Island, BC. Her work investigates the construction of knowledge, history and cultural identities. She has exhibited internationally in, amongst other places, San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Vancouver, Finland, Detroit, Geneva, Guangzhou and New York and created permanent projects in public spaces in Hamburg, Galilee, Stockholm, Knislinge, Geneva, Glasgow and now Vancouver.

REFERENCES

Colin Browne and Esther Shalev-Gerz, “In Conversation: The Shadow,“ The Capilano Review 3.36 (Fall 2018): 69-77.

Kevin Griffin, “ART SEEN: The Shadow that Came for a Visit to the University of B.C.,” Vancouver Sun, 12 October 2017.

Zak Vescera, “Esther Shalev-Gerz: The Artist Behind The Shadow,” TheUbyssey, 8 November 2017.

CITR, UBC Happy Hour, “S1 E16: The Shadow,” 2 February 2018.

DOWNLOAD A COPY OF THE BOOKLET

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Commissioned with support from the Burrard Arts Foundation, Rick Erickson and Donna Partridge, Brigitte and Henning Freybe, Phil Lind, the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, the Rennie Foundation and UBC’s Matching Fund for Outdoor Art through Infrastructure Impact Charges.

Time-lapse installation of Esther Shalev-Gers’ The Shadow, 2016-2018

Public lecture with Esther Shalev-Gerz discussing her work and her proposal for The Shadow. Presented at the Belkin Gallery on Tuesday 14 November 2017 with introductory remarks from Barbara Cole, Curator of Outdoor Art and Scott Watson, Director/Curator.
2015-2017

James Hart, 7idansuu, Reconciliation Pole: Honouring a Time Before, During and After Canada's Indian Residential Schools

By James Hart, 7idansuu
Red and yellow cedar, oil paint, copper, abalone

Reconciliation Pole is situated on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people. Musqueam Indian Band has given permission to James Hart to locate Reconciliation Pole at The University of British Columbia, in their traditional territory.

The pole was designed and carved under the direction of master carver and hereditary chief, 7idansuu (Edenshaw) James Hart, Haida of Haida Gwaii, assisted by community members Gwaliga Hart, John Brent Bennett, Jaalen Edenshaw, Derek White, Leon Ridley, Brandon Brown, and late son Carl Hart. Fellow artists from across Canada carved/painted the children — Zacharias Kunuk (Inuit), Shane Perley-Dutcher (Maliseet), Greg Hill (Mohawk), Phil Gray (Tsimshian/Cree), Susan Point (Musqueam), Kevin Cranmer (Kwakwaka-wakw), Christian White, Reg Davidson and Corey Bulpitt (Haida), Sven Haakanson (Aleut). Many volunteers young and old nailed in all the copper nails. The pole, carved from an 800-year-old red cedar log, was installed on April 1, 2017.

Reconciliation Pole recognizes a complex history which includes the history of the Indian Residential Schools. The schools, instituted by the federal government, operated for more than 100 years, the last school closing in 1996. The schools forcibly separated an estimated 150,000 children from their parents, families and culture. Many students died in the schools and many more suffered severe forms of psychological physical and sexual abuse.

At UBC, both Reconciliation Pole and the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre ensure this important history will not be forgotten and knowledge of it will provide more informed ways of working towards a better future.

For the Haida people today carving and publicly raising new poles is a way of honouring history and celebrating the ongoing vitality of cultural practices. The pole carved in the Haida tradition is distinct from that of Musqueam and other coastal communities. Though culturally distinct, Reconciliation Pole honours all First Nations who have persisted through the dark experience of the schools and look to a better future.

History / Biography

Born into the Eagle Clan at Old Massett, Haida Gwaii, Haida master carver and hereditary chief 7idansuu (pronounced “ee-dan-soo”), James Hart (b. 1952), has been carving since 1979. In addition to his monumental sculptures and totem poles, which can be seen at the Museum of Anthropology on campus, he is a skilled jeweler and printmaker and considered a pioneer among Haida artists in the use of bronze casting.

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Commissioned with support from the Audain Foundation; and UBC’s Matching Fund for Outdoor Art through Infrastructure Impact Charges, 2017
2016

Marianne Nicolson, The Sun is Setting on the British Empire

By Marianne Nicolson
385.0 x 650.0 cm, digital print on banner

Commissioned for the exhibition To refuse/To wait/To sleep (January 13-April 9, 2017), Marianne Nicolson reworks the British Columbia provincial flag by repositioning and inverting the Union Jack below a setting/rising sun that has been recreated with a Pacific Northwest Coast Indigenous aesthetic. Nicolson references the flag’s original orientation (1895-1906); while the early version shows the sun atop the Union Jack and suggests a cooperative situation and mutually beneficial alliances between the crown and Indigenous nations, these emblems were reversed in1906 and symbolically reveal a relationship of oppression, theft and genocide. By righting the symbols of the flag back to their original relationship, Nicolson’s banner invigoratesthe hope for and assertion of Indigenous rights over the land, which today remain largely unresolved.

Nicolson’s banner was installed on the exterior of the Belkin Art Gallery in 2017. From 2011 to 2016, Luis Camnitzer’s The Museum Is a School (2010/11) was installed as part of the artist’s exhibition at the Gallery (September 30-December 4, 2011), with the words, “The Museum Is a School: The Artist Learns to Communicate, the Public Learns to Make Connections.” From 2005 to 2010, Jamelie Hassan’s Because … there was and there wasn’t a city of Baghdad (1991) hung on the exterior of the building, which originally was conceived in response to the Gulf War and featured a photograph Hassan took on her first visit to Baghdad in the late 1970s. Hassan’s work is part of the University Outdoor Art collection.

History / Biography

Marianne Nicolson is an artist of Scottish and Dzawada̱’enux̱w First Nations descent, a member tribe of the Kwakwaka’wakw. Working in a variety of media, her artworks are contemporary expressions of traditional Kwakwaka’wakw concepts; she first came to prominence in 1998 when she scaled a vertical rock face in Kingcome Inlet, BC to paint a large-scale pictograph—the first in the inlet in more than 60 years—to mark the continued vitality of her ancestral village of Gwa’yi.

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Marianne Nicolson, discusses her work, The Sun is Setting on the British Empire installed on the exterior of the Morris and Helen and Belkin Art Gallery and her work installed in the Walter C. Koerner Library, both of which were included in the exhibition To refuse/To wait/To sleep (13 January – 9 April 2017). The talk was presented on 25 March 2017.
1991/2007

Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds, Native Hosts

By Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds
46.0 x 91.0 cm each, 12 aluminum signs

Native Hosts consists of 12 aluminum signs that address the relationship between First Nations and British Columbia. The signs are sited at different locations throughout the northwest sector of the UBC campus. On the white background of each sign, “British Columbia” is spelled backwards in red text, followed by the phrase “Today your Host is…” The phrase is completed by one of 12 names of First Nations. Employing the format of official public signage, the artist asks viewers both to consider and to question its authoritative power. The importance of language in Heap of Birds’ work is evident here in the imaginative and challenging use of text to provoke responses to queries around history, public space, land claims as well as notions of generosity and sharing.

The 12 host nations represented in Native Hosts are: Chilcotin, Cree, Haida, Gitksan, Kwagiulth, Lillooet, Lil’wat, Musqueam, Nuu’chah’nulth, St’at’yemc, Squamish and Wet’suwet’en.

Native Hosts was exhibited in 1991 on the grounds of the Vancouver Art Gallery, formerly the province’s law courts, as part of the exhibition Lost Illusions; a similar series was also shown in New York in 1988, at the Portland Art Museum in 2004, at Pitzer College in Claremont, California in 2014 and in Winnipeg in 2016.

History / Biography

Edgar Heap of Birds (b. 1954) is an internationally known artist and scholar of Cheyenne and Arapaho descent. He earned an MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1979 and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston in 2008 and an Honorary Doctorate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver in 2017. Since the mid-1970s, he has exhibited in the US, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Europe. He frequently engages with issues addressing colonial history and contemporary Indigenous experience around the world.

Jordan Abel on Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds’ Native Hosts (1991/2007) Directed and edited by Ian Barbour
1948/2004

Ellen Neel, Victory Through Honour

By Ellen Neel
515 x 203 x 50 cm, cedar and paint

Located outside Brock Hall on East Mall, this pole is a replica of Neel’s original, which was given to the Alma Mater Society by the artist in 1948. Neel presented the pole to the AMS in front of a crowd of 6,000 people at the old Varsity Stadium during the intermission of the homecoming football game. Along with the pole, Chief William Scow of the Kwicksutaineuk Nation granted the University permission to use the symbol and name “Thunderbird” for UBC athletics.

The pole tells the story of Tsi-kumi, who overcomes four tests to become Chief Shaman of the Red Cedar Bark Dance and founder of Qui-Owa Sutinuk, ancestors of the carver. Neel wanted the pole to acknowledge and empower Indigenous populations and make visible the commitment made to them by UBC. Neel dedicated the totem with the following statement:

“To the Native people of the whole province we can give our assurance that your children will be accepted at this school by the Staff and Student Council, eager to smooth their paths with kindness and understanding. We need now only students to take advantage of the opportunity, so that some day our doctors, lawyers, social workers and departmental workers will be fully trained University graduates of our own race.”
— Ellen Neel, The Native Voice, November, 1948

After years of exposure to the elements and incidents of vandalism, the pole was removed in 1973. The AMS hired Douglas Cranmer, a nephew of Ellen Neel, to restore the pole. After the repair, it was erected near the Student Union Building.

In 2001, the University had to remove the pole again after it had been severely damaged by vandals. Carvers Calvin Hunt, Mervin Child and John Livingston were hired to create a replica, which was dedicated in 2004 as a reaffirmation of UBC’s commitment to stand in solidarity with Indigenous students and to work towards increasing their representation on campus. (According to UBC Public Affairs, in 2004 only one percent, equivalent to 500 people, of the student body.) At this time, the Musqueam gave permission to the Neel and Scow families to locate the pole on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people.

History / Biography

Neel (1916-1966) was an artist and carver from Alert Bay on Vancouver Island and the granddaughter of Yakuglas, Charlie James, a Kwakwaka’wakw carver who produced the house posts in Stanley Park. She moved to Vancouver with her husband in 1943, where they opened Totem Art Studios and later a workshop at Ferguson Point in Stanley Park. Neel is known as the first woman totem pole carver and was instrumental in helping to revitalize the carving tradition in the Kwakwaka’wakw community. Her artistic legacy continues for generations through her impact on countless Northwest Coast artists, including her own grandson David A. Neel and Kwakwaka’wakw carver and activist Beau Dick (1955-2017).

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Gift of the Alma Mater Society, 2000
2003

Rodney Graham, Millennial Time Machine

By Rodney Graham
landau carriage with camera obscure

Rodney Graham, Millennial Time Machine, 2003

Housed in a glass-walled pavilion at the southwest corner of Main Mall and Memorial Road, this sculpture is the first work of art to be commissioned for the campus since 1976.

Millenial Time Machine is a 19th-century horse-drawn carriage converted into a camera obscura. The camera obscura, which produces an image that is upside down and reversed, was an influential precursor to the modern, multi-lens camera, and was widely employed as an instrument of scientific inquiry, artistic practice and popular entertainment. From the late 1500s to the 1800s, the camera obscura was used to illustrate the workings of human vision and stood as a model, in both rational and empiricist thought, of how observation leads to truthful inferences about the world.

A lens, installed at the back of the carriage, is focused on a sequoia tree located behind the recently constructed Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre and between the Walter C. Koerner Library and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre; the sequoia can grow to be one of the tallest trees in the world and is particularly long-lived. The camera obscura captures the image of the sequoia and projects it inverted onto a fabric screen located inside the carriage. Graham has been working with this technology and with the image of the inverted tree since the late 1970s. In this context, the image of the tree raises issues around the economy, environment and ownership of land. The tree and its location are also meant to provoke questions about the University as a place where knowledge, technologies and histories are constructed, and how this information is passed on to future generations of students.

The glass and concrete pavilion was designed by the artist in collaboration with architects Tim Newton and John Wall. In 2006, the pavilion was awarded a special prize by the Architectural Institute of BC. Its structure also echoes that of a camera with the lens-like window on the door, and the round oculi which let light enter through the ceiling.

Appointments to view the Millennial Time Machine can be made through the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, belkin.gallery@ubc.ca

History / Biography

Rodney Graham (b. 1949) is an internationally renowned artist. He was born in Abbotsford, BC, studied at UBC and continues to live and work in Vancouver. In 1997, he represented Canada at the Venice Biennale and his work is included in public galleries and museums around the world. In 2011, he received the Audain Prize for lifetime achievement in the visual arts in BC and in 2016, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for his contributions to Canadian contemporary art. Graham works in a variety of media including sculpture, video, photography, performance and music. His outdoor sculpture Aerodynamic Forms in Space, commissioned for the City of Vancouver in 2010, can be seen at the Georgia Street entrance to Stanley Park.

Funder

Gift of the artist with support from the Canada Council for the Arts Millennium Fund; the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation; British Columbia 2000 Recognition Plan; and The University of British Columbia, 2003

Partners

Design: Rodney Graham and superkül; Structural Engineer: Fast and Epp; Mechanical Engineer: The Sheltair Group Resource Consultants Inc.; Electrical Engineer: Pacific Rim Consultants Ltd.; Project Manager: Dianna Foldi, UBC Land and Building Services; Contractor: The Haebler Group General Contractors

Léa Toulouse introducing Rodney Graham’s Millennial Time Machine (2003), August 28, 2015.

;Holly Ward on Rodney Graham’s Millennial Time Machine (2003) Directed and edited by Ian Barbour.
2002

Myfanwy MacLeod, Wood for the People

By Myfanwy MacLeod
183 x 366 x 48 cm, cast concrete

Installed along the entry staircase to the Belkin Art Gallery, Wood for the People features 214 pieces of concrete cast in the shape of wood and stacked in the form of a woodpile. The work suggests a romantic pastoral landscape and appears misplaced on the manicured grounds of UBC, thereby inserting a sense of irony. Because of their texture and arrangement, especially after being exposed to the weather, the logs convincingly resemble firewood stacked and ready for use, though the material betrays its status as an architectural folly and lends the work the appearance of a ruin or even a fossil. Seen in this light, the work makes a statement about environmental and economic issues particular to British Columbia. The work also references a barricade, a reading that transforms it from a benign woodpile to a politically charged piece that raises questions about control and access at the University.

History / Biography

Myfanwy MacLeod (b. 1961) was born in London, ON and currently resides in Vancouver. She completed her BFA in Film at Concordia University in Montreal, and in 1994 received an MFA from UBC where her advisor was Jeff Wall. Her work has been exhibited across Canada and abroad and she received the VIVA award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation in 1999.

Other outdoor works in Vancouver by MacLeod include The Birds (2010) at Olympic Village and Playtime (2016) at BC Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Both express the characteristic sense of humour and whimsy prevalent in her work.

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Purchased with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance program; and the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, 2003

Léa Toulouse introducing Myfanwy MacLeod’s Wood for the People (2002), 28 August 2015.

Vanessa Kwan on Myfanwy MacLeod’s Wood for the People (2002) Directed and edited by Ian Barbour.

Myfanwy MacLeod discusses Wood for the People (2002) with Chris Gaudet.
1966-67/1995

Robert Murray, Cumbria

By Robert Murray
470 x 709 x 714 cm, Corten steel

This work will be restored and reinstalled on campus in 2019.

Cumbria was first exhibited at Toronto’s City Hall for Sculpture ’67. The large-scale work was selected by New York’s Parks Department Office of Cultural Affairs for the Sculpture of the Month program. It was shown at Battery Park in Manhattan, the city where Murray made his home in 1968. The sculpture returned to Canada in 1969 for the newly-opened Vancouver International Airport. Jean Sutherland Boggs (Director of the National Gallery of Canada) hoped the sculpture would reflect the international aspirations of both the airport and the city of Vancouver.

Cumbria generated much public controversy because it departed from traditional sculptural forms. In Vancouver, it was initially to be sited in a prominent place to create a soaring effect but was moved to the median on Grant McConachie Way. Amid busy traffic and beside a gas station, the sculpture could not be properly viewed. By 1993, the airport removed Cumbria with bulldozers, causing irreparable damage, and once again, public controversy. In 1995, with the intervention of artist Toni Onley, Transport Canada agreed to donate the work to UBC and fund its re-fabrication. Cumbria was the first large-scale public sculpture installed at UBC since 1975.

Be sure to walk around Cumbria and notice how dramatically the perspective changes from different viewing angles.

History / Biography

Robert Murray is well known in Canada and the United States for his large, non-representational, painted steel and aluminum sculptures. His early training as a painter is evident in the attention to the surface of the sculptures and his use of colour.

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Gift of Transport Canada, 1995
1987

Glenn Lewis, Classical Toy Boat

By Glenn Lewis
152 x 97 x 74 cm, marble

Classical Toy Boat (1987) by Vancouver artist Glenn Lewis was initially located outside of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery on the Toronto waterfront in 1987 as part of the exhibition From Sea to Shining Sea. It was purchased by the Belkin Art Gallery in 2009 for the University Art Collection and restored in anticipation of its new location.

The site chosen for this work is the pool on the north side of University Centre (formerly the Faculty Club) designed by Frederic Lasserre with an addition by Arthur Erickson and landscape design by Cornelia Oberlander. The shape of the boat reflects the innocence of a child’s toy and the material, Italian Carrera marble, makes reference to classical Roman sculpture, a juxtaposition that lends this work a tone of humour. In spite of the weight of the marble, the boat conveys a spirit of resilience in that it defies gravity and magically hovers above the surface of the water. This work and its site provide a strong connection between the indoor spaces of the University Centre building and the outdoors—a visual punctuation to a subdued and discreet site. This work was originally conceived as a reference to temporary installations in the gardens at UBC undertaken in the late 1960s and early 70s by Lewis, Michael Morris, Gathie Falk, and others.

History / Biography

Born in Chemainus, BC in 1935, Glenn Lewis graduated from the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) in 1958 with honours in painting, drawing and ceramics. Subsequently, he studied ceramics under Bernard Leach in St. Ives (Cornwall, England) (1961–1964). He was an active member of the avant-garde art scene in Vancouver during the 1960s, producing work in video, performance, film, ceramics, photography, sculpture and writing that blurred the boundaries between media and between viewer and artist.

As one of the co-founders of the Western Front, Lewis initiated and administered the Video Program (1974–1976), curated the Performance Art Program (1977–1979), acted as arts administrator and program coordinator (1979–1987), initiated and coordinated the Computer-Integrated Media Program (1985–1987) and was Acting Director for three months in 1994. In addition, Lewis was head of the Media Arts Section of the Canada Council (1987–1990). Solo exhibitions include the Douglas Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Presentation House Gallery and the Belkin Satellite. Lewis lives and works in Vancouver.

Funder

Purchased with support from the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program and the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, 2009. Installed with support from UBC’s Matching Fund for Outdoor Art through Infrastructure Impact Charges.

Vanessa Kwan on Glenn Lewis’ Classical Toy Boat (1987). Directed and edited by Ian Barbour

Glenn Lewis discusses Classical Toy Boat (1987) with Keith Wallace, Curator of Outdoor Art, and Naomi Sawada, Manager of Public Programs at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC.
1958/1977

Otto Fischer-Credo, Asiatic Head

By Otto Fischer-Credo
190 x 70 x 51 cm, concrete, marble, sand and polyester resin

This work features a large stylized head with Asian characteristics and has been variously interpreted as both a man and a woman. The original sculpture, executed in 1958 by Otto Fischer-Credo and generously donated by Mrs. Astrid Fischer-Credo, was replaced in 1977 with a replica made by Gerhard Class. The replica sculpture is constructed of marble, sand and polyester resin and is located at the north end of the covered walkway between the Music and Lasserre Buildings. Its position under the walkway frames the view of the work and creates a sense of drama. Asiatic Head was originally exhibited on the UBC campus and then at the Burnaby Municipal Hall as part of an exhibition of outdoor sculpture organized in 1958 by the Northwest Institute of Sculptors in association with UBC’s Department of University Extension, the BC Centennial Committee and the Municipality of Burnaby.

History / Biography

Fischer-Credo (1890-1959) was born in Berlin. He studied at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin from 1908 to 1915 and the Royal Academy of Art in Paris from 1919 to 1921. From the 1920s to1930s, Fischer-Credo lived and worked in Manila where he created monumental sculptures for civic buildings and bridges. During the Second World War, Fischer-Credo was conscripted into the German military as a war artist before moving to Vancouver in 1957. His work has been exhibited in the Phillipines, Mexico, Cuba and the United States.

Funder

Gift of Astrid Fischer-Credo, 1960
1976

Jack Harman, Portrait Bust of Dr. Norman A. M. MacKenzie

By Jack Harman
68 x 77.5 x 39.4 cm, bronze

Located between Lasserre Building and Frederic Wood Theatre, this work was donated to UBC in 1976 by the Alumni Association, and is a naturalistic depiction of Norman Archibald MacRae “Larry” MacKenzie (1894–1986). MacKenzie served as the third President of UBC from 1944 to 1962.

MacKenzie was born in Pugwash, NS, had a brief farming career in Saskatchewan and earned the Military Cross and Bar for his service in the Canadian Army in World War I. He studied arts and law at Dalhousie University where a second identical casting of the sculpture was dedicated in the same year (1976), and studied international law at Harvard and Cambridge Universities. MacKenzie was Professor of International Law at the University of Toronto and President of the University of New Brunswick before becoming UBC President.

A great proponent of the arts, MacKenzie helped establish the UBC Schools of Architecture and Music and the Departments of Theatre and Fine Arts. His statue gazes upon the Belkin Art Gallery, and his secretary, Helen Belkin, is the Gallery’s namesake.

History / Biography

Jack Harman (1927-2001) was born in Vancouver and studied at the Vancouver School of Art and the Slade School in London in the early 1950s. His first solo show was held at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1962. Harman taught at the Vancouver School of Art and the Emily Carr College of Art, and is recognized for establishing the first sculpture foundry in BC. Harman is known for works such as Reconciliation, The Peacekeeping Monument and the equestrian statue Queen Elizabeth II, both in Ottawa. He received the Order of British Columbia in 1996 for his contributions to art.

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Gift of the Alumni Association, 1976
1971

Robert Weghsteen, Untitled

By Robert Weghsteen
323 x 470 cm, ceramic

This work was presented to UBC in 1971 by the Vancouver Chapter of the Alpha Omega Fraternity. It is located on the exterior wall of the south entrance to the MacDonald Building, which is home to the Faculty of Dentistry. Robert Weghsteen prioritized creating a work that would integrate with the building’s architecture.

The surface of Weghsteen’s two-panel ceramic wall mural is a luminous silver-grey with hints of brown. From a distance the colour appears uniform, but a closer look reveals subtle variations in tone and texture. Each panel is composed of fitted tiles that are connected by a rhythm of abstract, organic forms, both raised and impressed into the ceramic.

History / Biography

Weghsteen was born in Belgium in 1929 and studied ceramics in the late 1940s at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, England. In 1956 Weghsteen came to Canada on holiday where the landscape of Vancouver and its open spaces provided a sharp contrast to his home in Belgium. Soon after, Weghsteen immigrated with his young family and shipped all of the equipment from his studio, including his kilns, by way of the Panama Canal. Once in Vancouver, Weghsteen established himself as a ceramic artist and muralist and had numerous commissions around the province. Weghsteen was President of the BC Potters Guild and taught at the Vancouver School of Art.

Funder

Commissioned with support from the Vancouver Alumni Chapter Alpha Omega Fraternity, 1971.
1968

Gerhard Class, Tuning Fork

By Gerhard Class
700 cm x 200 cm x 260 cm, Corten steel

Located in front of the main entrance to the Music Building, Alfred Blundell donated the funds to commission this sculpture for UBC in 1968; the design was selected by jury in a closed competition. Class created the work specifically for this site in UBC’s fine arts precinct, where students study music, fine art, theatre and architecture. The sculpture’s two free-standing forms complement one another and evoke the close relationship between the arts disciplines. Class envisioned that Tuning Fork would dominate the plaza and rise above the horizontal line of the covered walkway, which connects the buildings in the precinct.

The artist fabricated the sculpture in Corten steel, anticipating the deep purple rust colour that it would quickly adopt. The work presents different configurations depending on where the viewer is positioned, with the twisting forms seeming to suggest a dance. Musicians will also recognize this form as an abstracted tuning fork, a two-pronged tool made of steel, which resonates at a constant pitch when struck. Class intended the work to bring to mind “a giant tuning fork large enough to have served Pythagoras and his theory of music and the harmony of the spheres” (Artist statement, 1967).

See Concerto for a biography of Gerhard Class.

Other work by Gerhard Class:
Concerto

History / Biography

Commissioned with support from Alfred Bundell, 1968
1968

George Norris, Untitled

By George Norris
422 x 1,572 cm, brick

Located on the exterior entrance wall to the Frank A. Forward Building, the sculpture was commissioned by UBC for the new building in 1968. The architects, McCarter, Nairne & Partners, asked Norris to design a work that would accentuate the building’s entrance, which was otherwise difficult to locate. Norris wanted to integrate the artwork with both the design of the building and its purpose, providing a home for the University’s Department of Metallurgy.

Norris’ abstract brick mosaic references a crystalline atomic structure with hexagonal symmetry. This design is an artistic interpretation of a mineral compound such as zinc, emerald or ice, all of which are six-fold in character. Norris made many of the bricks himself and impressed designs upon them with metallic components to create pattern and texture.

Frank Forward, after whom the building was named, was a pioneer in metallurgy and the Head of the University’s Department of Metallurgy from 1945 to 1964. In the early 1990s the Department changed its name to Materials Engineering.

History / Biography

Norris (1928-2013) was born in Victoria, BC, and studied at the Vancouver School of Art, Syracuse University and at Slade School of Fine Arts in London, England. He taught at UBC’s Extension Department and the Vancouver School of Art. In the 1960s and 1970s Norris was well known as a sculptor and received numerous commissions at sites including churches, hotels, commercial buildings and UBC. His projects were often conceived in close collaboration with the architects of the building for which his work was commissioned. Norris has several sculptures on campus, including the UBC ceremonial mace. His large fountain, The Crab (1968) was commissioned by the Vancouver Centennial Commission to celebrate Canada’s centennial in 1967 and is located at the entrance to the Museum of Vancouver in Vanier Park. Norris is the recipient of the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Art Award in 2010.

Other work by George Norris in the Belkin Gallery collection:
Mother and Child, 1955
Man about to Plant Alfalfa, 1967

Funder

Commissioned by the University of British Columbia, 1968
1967

George Norris, Man about to Plant Alfalfa

By George Norris
95.3 x 73.7 x 83.8 cm, granite

This carved sculpture is located in the courtyard of the H.R. MacMillan Building, which houses the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. Dr. Blythe Alfred Eagles, who was a long-time Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, commissioned the work for the opening of the MacMillan Building as a memorial to his parents, who were pioneers in the settlement of British Columbia, and to all of those who laboured to improve agriculture in the province. Eagles’ parents reached BC with their respective families in 1885; his mother from Ontario and his father from England via Manitoba. Both families were actively engaged in agricultural or horticultural pursuits.

The Vancouver Sun offered a tribute to Eagles on the occasion of his Great Trekker Award, lauding that under Eagles’ administration the Faculty of Agriculture more than any other at the University:

…had the closest and most personal relation with problems and progress of a large and important section of the people of British Columbia…[and] was consistently accessible and helpful to, not only organizations and industries, but individual ranchers, farmers, dairymen and specialist growers. (“A Proper Recognition,” The Vancouver Sun, 22 October 1966)

Eagles’ commitment to the individual agricultural worker is highlighted in Norris’ sculpture. The work depicts a smoothly curved, stylized figure of a man who is bending down in the action of planting a seedling. The original bronze trifoliate leaf has unfortunately disappeared. The man’s action evokes both the cyclical nature of the growing season and of the farmers’ work.

History / Biography

Norris (1928-2013) was born in Victoria, BC, and studied at the Vancouver School of Art, Syracuse University and at Slade School of Fine Arts in London, England. He taught at UBC’s Extension Department and the Vancouver School of Art. In the 1960s and 1970s Norris was well known as a sculptor and received numerous commissions at sites including churches, hotels, commercial buildings and UBC. His projects were often conceived in close collaboration with the architects of the building for which his work was commissioned. Norris has several sculptures on campus, including the UBC ceremonial mace. His large fountain, The Crab (1968) was commissioned by the Vancouver Centennial Commission to celebrate Canada’s centennial in 1967 and is located at the entrance to the Museum of Vancouver in Vanier Park. Norris is the recipient of the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Art Award in 2010.

Other work by George Norris in the Belkin Gallery collection:
Mother and Child, 1955
Untitled, 1968

Funder

Gift of Dean and Mrs. Blythe Eagles, 1967
1967

Zeljko Kujundzic, Thunderbirds

By Zeljko Kujundzic
each thunderbird 180 x 180 cm (12 in total), concrete

Located high atop the supporting poles of Thunderbird Stadium, this work consists of this work consists of 12 giant thunderbirds. This sculptural project was commissioned by the University for the opening of the stadium in 1967. Kujundzic’s piece enhances the architectural concept, exposing the function of the stadium “through an aggressive aesthetic symbolism of the team spirit” (Artist statement, 1967).

The thunderbird was adopted as the symbol and name for UBC’s athletic teams in the mid-1930s and was officially sanctioned by Indigenous leaders in 1948 (see Ellen Neel’s Victory Through Honour). The thunderbird is a sacred creature revered by Indigenous people of the Northwest Coast. According to legend, this spirit bird was so powerful that the motion of its wings caused thunder and its eyes flashed lightning. The thunderbird is described as both a benevolent protector capable of granting supernatural blessings as well as a terror who engages in warfare with humans and beasts.

History / Biography

Kujundzic was born in the former Yugoslavia and was educated at the University of Budapest. He lived in Scotland from 1948 to 1958, when he moved to Cranbrook, BC. Following his move to Canada, he painted among the people of the Kootenay Nation, and the use of Northwest Coast motifs in Thunderbirds reflects this influence. Kujundzic was a founder of the Kootenay School of the Arts and served as its director (1959-1963). In 1968, he moved to the US where he was Head of the Fine Arts Department at Pennsylvania State University, retiring to the Okanagan in 1982.

Funder

Commissioned by the University of British Columbia, 1967.
1965

Paul Deggan, Untitled

By Paul Deggan
272 x 455 cm, copper, aluminum and brass

Located on the exterior of the north wall of the Neville Scarfe Building entrance, this wall relief was commissioned through a gift from the BC Teachers’ Federation to mark the opening of the new Education Building. Deggan’s work was chosen by a jury from 30 proposals submitted by artists across the country.

The work consists of three separate components made of different materials—copper, brass and aluminum—and over time each has turned a different colour. Though the work is abstract, Deggan took his inspiration from nature, and the sculpture’s design calls up the patterns of leaves and the texture of tree bark.

History / Biography

Deggan was born in England and educated at the Kingston School of Art, the Chichester School of Art and the Worthing College of Arts and Crafts in England. He moved to Canada in 1957 and taught at the Vancouver School of Art and Capilano College. In 1980, Deggan and his French-born wife Babette, who works in pottery, created the Centre Festival des Arts de Montaigut-le-Blanc in the Auvergne region of France. The Centre offered summer workshops in painting, drawing, French language, writing and photography. The Deggans ran this program for 24 years until they retired to Bowen Island, BC in 2005.

Funder

Commissioned with support from the BC Teachers Federation, 1965.
1961

Jack Harman, Transcendence

By Jack Harman
350 x 183 x 110 cm, bronze

Located at the southeast corner of the Thea Koerner Graduate Student Centre on Crescent Road, Transcendence marks Harman’s first commission and was cast in bronze at his North Vancouver foundry. Transcendence, which can be interpreted as rising above, going beyond the limits, or exceeding in excellence, is an apt symbol for the University. Water is an integral part of this work, creating sound as well as a sense of movement. The upward thrust of the water is echoed by the raised arms of the figures, each of whom face one of the cardinal points of the compass.

History / Biography

Jack Harman (1927-2001) was born in Vancouver and studied at the Vancouver School of Art and the Slade School in London in the early 1950s. His first solo show was held at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1962. Harman taught at the Vancouver School of Art and the Emily Carr College of Art, and is recognized for establishing the first sculpture foundry in BC. Harman is known for works such as Reconciliation, The Peacekeeping Monument and the equestrian statue Queen Elizabeth II, both in Ottawa. He received the Order of British Columbia in 1996 for his contributions to art.

Funder

Commissioned by The University of British Columbia, 1961

Micaela Kwiatkowski introducing Jack Harman’s Transcendence (1961), August 8, 2016.
1961

Gerhard Class, Concerto

By Gerhard Class
213 x 198 x 15 cm, copper

Located on the exterior wall of the Main Mall entrance to Buchanan A Building, this abstract sculpture was selected by jury specifically for this site and was funded by a grant from the Canada Council. It was commissioned in 1960 to celebrate the building’s 1958 opening and completed by the artist in 1961. Concerto was restored in 2016-17.

Concerto is made of welded and soldered sheet copper and marks the first time Class used these techniques and material in his work. Metal became a material he used frequently for his sculpture, another example being Tuning Fork located in front of the Music Building at UBC. For Concerto, Class employed copper because of its unique colour.

History / Biography

Gerhard Class (1924-1997) was born in Germany. The tradition of sculpture ran in his family; both his father and grandfather worked in stone. Eager to follow in their footsteps, Class attended the School of Art in Strasbourg, the School for Granite Sculpture in Wunsledel and the State Academy of Fine Arts in Germany. He also attended the Instituto de Allende in San Miguel, Mexico. Class arrived in Canada in 1951 and taught sculpture at the Vancouver School of Art and at UBC, and completed many large commissions in Vancouver and Victoria.

Funder

Commissioned with the support of the Canada Council, 1960
1958

Lionel and Patricia Thomas, Untitled (Symbols for Education)

By Lionel and Patricia Thomas
610 x 870 cm, enamel tile

Located on the exterior of the Brock Hall Annex entrance, this mosaic was commissioned by the Graduating Class of 1958 for the new wing of the building. Through the use of symbol and colour, the mosaic represents the UBC faculties and departments through 54 separate blocks of varying sizes. Many of the symbols are easily decipherable, such as the one for Music, located at the top centre of the mural, which pictures a twelve-tone scale and ear. Others are more esoteric, such as the image in the square at the bottom right hand corner, which is an early Greek symbol for family and home, and in this context is meant to represent Home Economics.

History / Biography

Lionel (1915-2005) and Patricia (1918-2011) Thomas collaborated on many projects together. Patricia (née Simons) became well known across North America during the 1950s as a pioneer in the field of architectural colour consulting. Lionel worked predominantly as a painter until the mid-1950s, after which time his practice shifted and he became recognized for his murals and sculpture. The Thomas’ advocated an interrelationship between the arts and emphasized the importance of collaboration between the disciplines of architecture and fine art, evidenced by Lionel Thomas’ teaching appointments at UBC’s Departments of Fine Arts and Architecture. They were committed to these ideals of the modern movement and were instrumental in bringing them to Vancouver. The pair’s painted mural The Pacific Rim (1969) hangs in the student union building, The Nest, and is part of the collection of the Alma Mater Society.

Funder

Commissioned by The University of British Columbia, 1958

Weiyi Chang introducing Lionel and Patricia Thomas’ Untitled (Symbols for Education) (1958), 22 August 2016.
1955/58

William McMillan, King George VI

By William McMillan
280 x 124 x 110 cm, bronze

Located near the Woodward Library, this sculpture was a gift to UBC from the Vancouver Branch of the War Amps of Canada and funded by Mr. P.A. Woodward, a veteran of World War II. This sculpture is a second casting of the original, located on the Mall leading up to Buckingham Palace in London. It was unveiled at UBC by the Lieutenant-Governor in 1958 and dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II when she visited campus on June 22, 1958. Up until recently, the sculpture had been erroneously attributed to British sculptor Charles Wheeler.

In the 1970s the sculpture suffered at the hands of vandals when King George’s sword was stolen under the cover of night. Twenty-five years later, a mystery caller telephoned the UBC President’s Office confessing to the prank. For all those years, the sword had decorated his living room. The anonymous caller returned the sword to the site, hiding it under nearby bushes. Unfortunately, the sword was stolen again in recent years.

The statue was rededicated to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passing of King George VI and to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s visit on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee in 2002. The presence of this sculpture on campus reminds us of the colonial history of British Columbia and of Canada’s continued membership in the British Commonwealth.

History / Biography

William McMillan was a sculptor and medal designer. He was born in Scotland and studied at Gray’s Art School and the Royal College of Art, London. McMillan was closely affiliated with the Royal Academy; he was elected an associate member in 1925, a full member in 1933 and from 1929-1941 was Master of the Royal Academy Sculpture School. He has many public works located throughout the United Kingdom.

Funder

Gift of the War Amps of Canada; and the Woodward Foundation, 1958
1957

Lionel Thomas, The Lion and St. Mark

By Lionel Thomas
395 x 370 x 25 cm, bronze

Located on the exterior south wall of St. Mark’s Theological College, Lionel Thomas was commissioned to make this sculpture by the architects Gardiner, Thornton, Gathe and Associates for the opening of the new building in 1957. Thomas’ work depicts St. Mark, the namesake of the Catholic theological college.

St. Mark is traditionally believed to have been the author of the second Gospel in the New Testament. Thomas’ sculpture shows the Saint holding a quill pen in one hand and a scroll in the other, ready to write the Gospel. St. Mark looks to the brilliant sun for inspiration, which is meant to symbolize the light of Christ. The lion, which symbolizes St. Mark, correlates with the opening of the Gospel which tells the story of St. John the Baptist, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” John the Baptist is described as a leonine being, “clothed with camel’s hair and with a girdle of a skin about his loins” (Mark 1:3).

The welded bronze and gold sculpture, whose lines are reminiscent of the technique of cloisonné, is set off the wall and designed to reflect the afternoon sun, casting shadows on the white wall of the building. This effect adds an important dimension to the work and creates a sense of depth.

Lionel Thomas (1915-2005) was born in Toronto, moving to Vancouver in 1940 with his wife and artistic partner Patricia (née Simons) where he began his teaching career at the Vancouver School of Art. He taught at UBC in both the Fine Arts and Architecture Departments between 1950 and 1980. He worked primarily as a painter until the mid-1950s, after which time he began to focus on murals and sculpture. The painted mural _The Pacific Rim_ (1969) by Thomas and his wife, Patricia, hangs in the new student union building, The Nest.

Funder

Commissioned by the architects Gardiner, Thornton, Gathe and Associates, 1957
1956

Robert Clothier, Three Forms

By Robert Clothier
218.5 x 86 x 115.5 cm, concrete

This work by Robert Clothier consists of three concrete forms, each resembling a slightly squared C, stacked and turned to present a configuration that changes according to the angle at which it is approached. Although Three Forms is an abstract work, the arrangement of its spare geometric forms evokes the human body.

History / Biography

Clothier was born in Prince Rupert, BC. After serving in World War II as a bomber pilot with the No. 408 Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force, he came to UBC in the late 1940s where he studied in the Department of Architecture before shifting his focus to theatre. He then attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England. Clothier is well known for his role as “Relic” in The Beachcombers, the popular CBC television series about rural West Coast life that aired from 1972 to 1990.

As a sculptor, Clothier (1921-1999) had his first exhibition at UBC in 1956 when Three Forms was included in an exhibition featuring the BC Chapter of the North West Institute of Sculpture. Three Forms won first place in the UBC Purchase Prize competition judged by the modernist sculptor Alexander Archipenko and by English author and art critic Herbert Read. Clothier often spoke about the parallels between acting and sculpting, noting that a sculpture must work from 360 degrees, much like “an actor can play upstage and let you read what he’s thinking about from his back.” Clothier, who was known to cover his scripts with drawings, found that making art provided a constructive balance to his life.

Funder

Purchased with funds from the UBC Purchase Prize, 1956
1955

George Norris, Mother and Child

By George Norris
95.3 x 89 x 89 cm, bronze

Located in the Acute Care Patient Park behind Koerner Pavilion, UBC Hospital, Mother and Child was given to UBC by an anonymous donor in 1957. Prior to 2016, the work had been situated between the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and the Hennings Building until construction of the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre forced its relocation. Mother and Child was originally intended for the entrance of the new Education Building and was meant to be accompanied by a pendant sculpture entitled Father and Child. However, the building was not finished until ten years after the commission and Father and Child was never completed. The sculpture was cast in 1956 in Rome, Italy by the Foundry of Signor Uicci.

History / Biography

Norris (1928-2013) was born in Victoria, BC, and studied at the Vancouver School of Art, Syracuse University and at Slade School of Fine Arts in London, England. He taught at UBC’s Extension Department and the Vancouver School of Art. In the 1960s and 1970s Norris was well known as a sculptor and received numerous commissions at sites including churches, hotels, commercial buildings and UBC. His projects were often conceived in close collaboration with the architects of the building for which his work was commissioned. Norris has several sculptures on campus, including the UBC ceremonial mace. His large fountain, The Crab (1968) was commissioned by the Vancouver Centennial Commission to celebrate Canada’s centennial in 1967 and is located at the entrance to the Museum of Vancouver in Vanier Park. Norris is the recipient of the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Art Award in 2010.

Other work by George Norris in the Belkin Gallery collection:
Man about to Plant Alfalfa, 1967
Untitled, 1968

Funder

Anonymous donor, 1957
1925

Charles Marega, Monkey and the Bearded Man

By Charles Marega
30.5 x 30.5 cm each, stone

This work, located over the front entrance of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (formerly the Main Library), consists of two components: a monkey holding a scroll bearing the word evolut, and a bearded man holding a tablet with the text funda inscribed onto it. This work was made to commemorate the public battle between evolutionists and fundamentalists famously fought in a United States courtroom. John Scopes, a teacher from Tennessee, was tried and convicted for teaching Charles Darwin’s biological history of evolution in his high school classroom. Scopes violated a state law that prohibited the teaching of doctrines contrary to the Bible. This “monkey trial” took place in 1925, the year that construction of the Main Library was completed.

In 1912, the architectural firm Sharp and Thompson was selected to design the Point Grey campus for the University, which included Main Library. Born and educated in England, George Thornton Sharp (1880-1974) came to Vancouver in 1908 where he worked as an architect, town planner and artist, contributing significantly to the architectural landscape of UBC and Vancouver, including his design for the Burrard Bridge.

History / Biography

Charles Marega (1871-1939) was commissioned to carve the exterior stone on the façade of the Main Library. Born in Lucinico, Italy, he studied sculpture in Zurich and Vienna and worked in South Africa before arriving in Vancouver in 1909. Marega (who changed his name from Carlos after becoming a Canadian citizen) worked prolifically in Vancouver between 1910 and 1938. His many commissions include the lions at the entrance to the Lions Gate Bridge, the ceiling of the Orpheum Theatre, the Harding Memorial at Stanley Park and the Burrard Bridge.

Funder

Commissioned by the University of British Columbia, 1925

The Belkin Gallery’s archival holdings are a resource for exhibitions, teaching and learning, and scholarly research. The archives include the papers of artists, art historians, and collectors, and contain materials in a wide range of media such as textual records, photographic and other visual records, sound and moving image records (including audio and video tape and film), and objects. The materials are especially related to contemporary art since the 1960s, with a strong thematic focus on concrete poetry, mail art, performance art, social art history, and cultural history.

The Archives is open to all researchers by appointment on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Please contact Shaunna Moore, Archivist to plan your visit.

Browse the archival holdings below or search for materials from the archives or permanent collection in our database.

1962-1994

Al Neil collection

19 audio and moving image recordings
The collection consists of audio and moving image recordings of performances by Al Neil and various musical ensembles that performed with him (Al Neil Trio, Al Neil Jazz Probe, Al Neil Quartet, and solo efforts). They include performances at the Vancouver School of Art, Simon Fraser University, The Western Front, and other locations. This collection contains CD and DVD copies (not the original recordings) of performances between 1962 and 1989.

The copies were produced as part of the Al Neil Project, a 2005 collaborative effort between the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, New Orchestra Workshop, Coastal Jazz and Blues Society, and the grunt gallery.

History / Biography

Al Neil is a writer, jazz musician, composer, visual artist, and performance artist. He was a prominent figure in the Vancouver arts scene and was particularly influential on the post-war literary, jazz, and visual arts communities from the 1950s to the 1970s. He is considered one of Canada’s great interdisciplinary pioneers.

Neil was born on March 26, 1924 in Vancouver, British Columbia. He received music lessons as a child, and began creating artworks as a young man while stationed in Port Hardy when working as a surveyor for the Department of Transportation. Neil later joined the army as a surveyor and saw action during the 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy. After he left the army and returned to Vancouver, Neil continued music lessons, with a strong interest in the jazz scene. At the same time, he was also interested in the arts and literature.

In 1958, Neil, along with four others, opened the Cellar, a jazz club at Main Street and Broadway, with his group as the house band. His music from this period has been described as experimental, avant-garde, and bebop. The Cellar also brought a number of prominent jazz artists to Vancouver, such as Art Pepper, Ornette Coleman, and others. The influence of these performers on Neil and the Vancouver jazz scene was profound. Dropping out of public performance for a few years, Neil re-emerged in the mid-sixties with a more experimental form of music-making incorporating Dada elements, and moving from jazz to sound-works integrating mixed tape and toy instruments among other elements.

Neil published books, magazine articles, poetry, and short stories. In the 1970s he also began exhibiting his artworks. By the early 1990s, Neil had withdrawn from the public eye. In 2003 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Neil continues to live in Vancouver.
1948-1992

Alvin Balkind fonds

1.93 m of textual records. 17 photographs. 1 audiocassette
The fonds reflects Alvin Balkind’s career as an art gallery curator, art critic, and active participant in the art community of Vancouver. Records relating to Balkind’s professional career include: research notes, notebooks, clippings, drafts and typescripts for his unpublished biography, short stories, articles, and critical art reviews; promotional posters; and materials relating to his founding of the New Design Gallery. The fonds also includes materials and correspondence relating to his work with the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, The University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery, and a proposed museum curation course at UBC entitled ‘Museum Philosophy and Practice’.

Personal records include: correspondence and memorabilia accumulated during trips to Europe (which always included the Venice Biennale), and Balkind and Rogatnick’s three-month journey in China (1987/1988); medical records; notes documenting his fight against lymphoma; photographs; and small pieces of art created by Balkind.

History / Biography

Alvin L. Balkind (1921-1992) was an art curator, critic, and essayist. Balkind was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and served in the navy in World War II. He began his university studies at Johns Hopkins University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts with a focus in literature and theatre, and pursued further studies at the Sorbonne.

In 1954, Balkind and his partner Abraham Rogatnick moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where Balkind went on to play a vital role in the development of the avant-garde art scene. Soon after moving to Vancouver, Balkind and Rogatnick established The New Design Gallery. It was the only gallery in Vancouver showing contemporary art at that time and was a hub of creativity for the small but vibrant art scene. The gallery hosted a wide variety of art exhibitions, performance pieces, and other events, including: live theatre, visual art, films, concerts, lectures, and poetry readings. Balkind was involved in running the New Design Gallery until 1962. In 1958 Balkind and Rogatnick opened the Vancouver Arts Club (now the Arts Club Theater), which acted as a venue for Marshall McLuhan’s first lecture.

From 1962 until 1973 Balkind held the position of curator of the University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery. He also taught classes in the Fine Arts Department of UBC, which was closely associated with the gallery. Under the direction of Balkind, the UBC Fine Arts Gallery moved in an innovative and creative direction, and the meager resources of the gallery were used to experiment with art, design, and curation. By taking such an approach, he attracted influential artists such as Ray Johnson. Balkind also curated the first shows of many artists who were later prominent in the Vancouver scene. Artists such as Jeff Wall, Ken Lum, and Ian Wallace got their start with Balkind as mentor and curator. Balkind also exhibited and promoted the work of female artists, such as Gathie Falk, whenever the opportunity arose.

Balkind became a Canadian citizen in 1969. In 1973, he left his position at the Fine Arts Gallery and continued his career in the arts first as curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, then head curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery (1975-1978), and later as the head of the visual arts studio at the Banff School of Fine Arts (1985-1987). In addition to his work as a curator at these institutions, Balkind also worked as an independent curator. In 1992, as a testament to his long and active career, Balkind was the first recipient of the $50,000 Vancouver Institute for Visual Art (VIVA) Award.

After a two-year fight with cancer, Balkind died in December 1992.
1997-1998

APEC Alert collection

3 cm of textual records + 1 sign : purple paint on chipboard ; 87 x 97 cm
The collection consists of two files containing APEC Alert posters, newsletters, stickers, and ephemera relating to the group’s advocacy of resistance to the APEC agenda. Also includes newsletters and similar material from other groups opposed to APEC, and one protest sign with text “APEC spells greed.”

History / Biography

APEC Alert was a grassroots group formed at the University of British Columbia, consisting of students, former students, faculty, staff, and others who were opposed to the Asia Pacific Economic (APEC) Summit on the UBC campus and to the entire APEC agenda. They formed in January 1997 after outgoing UBC President, David Strangaway, announced his unilateral decision to host the APEC leaders summit on campus November 24-25, 1997. Their mandate, in conjunction with other similar anti-APEC groups, was to raise awareness of APEC among students, staff, and faculty, advocating political action and creative resistance to APEC with a diverse range of activities.

APEC Alert was created in the belief that the APEC summit was held not to foster free trade, but to impose changes to benefit corporations at the expense of people, governments, and the environment. The group considered APEC to be undemocratic, complicit in the erosion of human rights, promoters of environmental destruction, and fostering a society of consumption.
1984-2004

Artropolis fonds

5.4 m of textual records and other material
The fonds consists of records relating to the planning, administrative, fundraising, promotional, documentary, and curatorial activities of the Artropolis exhibitions. These materials include: budgets, grant applications, proposals, research files and site plans; correspondence, financial statements, fundraising letters, logos, licenses and contracts, employee and volunteer files, minutes and reports; press releases and sponsorship agreements, banners, brochures and posters; and artists’ résumés and applications, attendance records, comment books, exhibition catalogues, scrapbooks, photo albums, photographs, video recordings, and artwork.

History / Biography

The Artropolis exhibitions were held in Vancouver in the years 1987, 1990, 1993, 1997, 2001, and 2003. Atropolis’ purpose was to feature the works of contemporary British Columbia artists in non-traditional exhibition spaces. Artropolis’ impetus came from the success of the October and Warehouse Shows in 1983 and 1984. These predecessors to Artropolis began in the tradition of “salons des refuses”, as a reaction to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s plans for the show “Art and Artists: 1931 to 1983.” Intended to celebrate the gallery’s re-opening in new facilities (the former court house at 750 Hornby Street), the exhibition was considered too exclusive by members of the Vancouver art community, who felt the gallery should expand their exhibition programming to include emerging local artists. In response, the October Show was conceived and organized collaboratively, and featured over 120 artists. It also gave rise to the formation of the Vancouver Artists League. The Warehouse Show followed in 1984; it took place on seven floors of 522 Beatty Street, featured artwork by approximately 190 artists, and drew 10,000 visitors.

The first Artropolis took place in 1987 and was held at 788 Beatty Street. Artropolis 90 took place at what is now the Roundhouse Community Centre. Artropolis 93 was held in the former Woodward’s building at 100 West Hastings Street. The 1997 version of Artropolis was entitled Browser. It again took place at Roundhouse Community Centre, but in a smaller exhibition space. Both Artropolis 2001 and 2003 were held in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Broadcasting Centre at 700 Hamilton Street.

The Vancouver Artists League and the Unit 306 Society organized Artropolis 87. In 1988, the non-profit A.T. Eight Artropolis Society was created to undertake future exhibitions in the tradition of the earlier shows. The Board of Directors failed to register the society with the British Columbia Registrar of Companies, and in 2004, grant applications for a proposed 2005 exhibition were rejected. As a result of these setbacks, the A.T. Eight Artropolis Society ceased to exist in 2005.
1972-2016

Belkin Archives collection

6.5 m of multiple media
The collection consists of materials that have been acquired by the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery Archives through various means such as donation, purchase, gift, mailing, etc. These materials include: artist’s books, magazines, photographs, sound recordings, buttons, catalogues, ephemera, and other materials that are unrelated to any other fonds or collection.

History / Biography

The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is mandated to research, exhibit, collect, publish, educate and develop programs in the field of contemporary art and in contemporary art approaches to the practice of art history and criticism. The Belkin houses the University’s growing collection of over 4,000 works of art—one of the largest public collections of art in the province—as well as an archive with over 30,000 archival items relating to the post-war history of art in Vancouver and its connections to a developing international avant-garde network during the 1960s and 1970s.

The Belkin’s archival holdings are a resource for exhibitions, teaching and learning, and scholarly research. The archives include the papers of artists, art historians, and collectors, and contain materials in a wide range of media such as textual records, photographic and other visual records, sound and moving image records (including audio and video tape and film), and objects. The materials are especially related to contemporary art since the 1960s, with a strong thematic focus on concrete poetry, mail art, performance art, social art history, and cultural history.
1994-1998

BOO Magazine fonds

34 cm of textual records
The fonds consists of materials accumulated during the editorial process of creating Boo. Includes letters to the editor, general correspondence, essays, articles, poems, commentaries, edited works, interviews, invoices, logo design, illustrations, photographs, mailing lists, flyers, brochures, grant guidelines, newspaper clippings, and issues no. 1 to no. 11 of the publication itself.

Contributors to the magazine, in addition to the editors, include Gerald Creede, Michelle Normoyle, Brice Canyon, Keith Wallace, Andrew Klobucar, Andrea Fatona, Janis Bowley, Melissa Wolsak, billy little, Arni Haraldsson, Judy Radul, Colin Smith, Susan Schupli, George Stanley, Scott Watson, Janet Lakeman, Dodie Bellamy, Peter Culley, Kevin Killian, Robert Ballantyne, Myfanwy MacLeod, Peter James Hudson, Erin O’Brien, Keith Higgins, Geoffrey Topham, Peter Cummings, Michael Turner, Naomi Foyle, Andrea Anderson, Jeff Deby, Clint Burnham, Bob Perelman, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Kevin Davies, Louis Cabri, Wayne Arsenault, Zainub Verjee, Zhao Tie Hai, Hank Bull, Robin Peck, Lucy Hogg, Wayde Compton, Tim Davis, Sharla Sava, Warren Murfitt, Jacqui Nolte, Gerry Gilbert, Patrik Anderson, Shannon Oksanen, Erin Moure, Sianne Ngai, G.B. Jones, David Bromage, Rob Manery, Miles Champion, Neil Wedman, Gerald Creede, Aaron Shurin, Brian MacNevin, Caroline Bergvall, Kathy Slade, Bruce Andrews, Tim Atkins, Glenn Alteen, Mark Klobucar, Stuart Blackley, Christine Corlett, Mair Dumett, Tom Raworth, Damon Crain, Geoffrey Farmer, and Brian Jungen.

History / Biography

BOO Magazine was started in 1994 out of frustration over the lack of a vehicle for critical and cultural discourse in Vancouver. After the collapse of the publication Vanguard in 1989 there were limited venues where writing about art and experimental writing in general could find a voice. A core group, which included Deanna Ferguson, Philip McCrum, Reid Shier, Dan Farrell, Michael Barnholden, and Mina Totino, decided to launch BOO as a cheaply produced tabloid that would provide an arena for predominantly local cultural writing, reviews, and criticism. Over time, some founding members left (Dan Farrell, Michael Barnholden, and Mina Totino) and others joined (Melinda Mollineaux). Each individual was responsible for bringing ideas for articles to meetings, where they were discussed and consensus was reached on whether they would be included in the next issue. At first BOO was funded through the sponsorship of various artist run centres, who distributed them for free in exchange for a small notice in the back. When this proved unfeasible, the editors began soliciting advertisements. The magazine folded in 1998, with a print run of 11 issues.
1982-1988

Coburg Gallery fonds

38 cm of textual records and graphic material
The fonds consists of records relating to the administrative and curatorial activities of the Coburg Gallery and its director, Bill Jeffries. The materials include local and international correspondence with artists, as well as other galleries’ directors and curatorial staff. The fonds also includes artwork sales information, financial records, exhibition invitations, and other promotional and documentary records produced and collected by the gallery.

History / Biography

The Coburg Gallery operated from 1983 to 1987 at #2 – 314 West Cordova Street in Vancouver, British Columbia. The name given to the gallery by its founder, Bill Jeffries, referenced his desire to foster cooperation between artistic communities living in different cities. The Coburg Gallery was instrumental in supporting and promoting Vancouver’s emerging photo-conceptualist art scene. Photographic works by local and international artists were primarily featured, although shows exhibiting artwork in other media were occasionally produced.

Bill Jeffries was the Coburg Gallery’s Director, principal curator, and sole paid employee during its five-year existence. Operations and administrative activities were occasionally performed by artist volunteers. Due to the wider public’s lack of interest in its exhibitions, financial difficulties, and the stress of single-handedly operating and curating a gallery, Jeffries closed the Coburg Gallery in 1987.
1963-2000

Concrete Poetry collection

15 m of textual records and other material
The Concrete Poetry collection consists of monographs, limited edition books and artists’ books, drawings, posters, prints, cards, boxes, wrappers, video recordings, and various small sculptures. The collection contains the following series: the Concrete Poetry series and the Peter Day series.

The collection encompasses a growing number of concrete poems and material related to concrete poetry from a large number of artists and it is intended that this collection will continue to accrue examples of concrete poetry and scholarship about the genre.

History / Biography

Concrete Poetry is a form of poetry typified by its intermediality. It derives its meaning from both the content and style of the poetry as well as the visual arrangement of the poetry. It originated, in its modern form, from the experimental atmosphere of the post World War II era. Many of the forefathers of the genre, such as Rühm, Oswald Weiner, Max Bense, Eugen Gomringer and Decio Pignatari, came out of the German-speaking areas of Europe and the “Noigandres” group of Brazil. These artists aligned concrete poetry with post-war urbanity and often had ties to other disciplines such as industry and architecture.

The movement expanded to encompass a much larger group of geographically dispersed poets when Eugen Gomringer opened a press in Frauenfeld, Switzerland in 1958 for publishing concrete poetry and, under the editorship of Max Bense and Elisabeth Walther, the published series “rot” began in Stuttgart, Germany in the early 1960s. Both Gomringer’s press and “rot” published concrete poetry from a wide variety of international sources and, as a result, were two of the major catalysts for the movement and its international expansion, which grew to include artists such as bill bissett, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Oyvind Fahlstrom.
1966-1968

David Farwell collection

8 posters ; 91.2 x 53.2 cm or smaller
The collection consists of posters, predominantly political in nature, collected by David Farwell.

History / Biography

David Farwell is a therapist in Vancouver. He was the partner of Vancouver poet Robin Blaser for more than thirty years.
1950-1999

Eric Metcalfe fonds

1.47 m of textual records and graphic material
The fonds consists of textual and graphic materials relating to the development of Metcalfe’s art projects and themes, including Leopard Realty and Banal Beauty Inc.; photographs and clippings documenting Metcalfe’s works; and materials sent and received through Metcalfe’s participation in several mail art networks, including Fluxus West, General Idea, and Image Bank.

History / Biography

Eric William Welton Metcalfe was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1940 and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, where his family moved in 1943. He began drawing, cartooning, and printmaking while attending St. Michael’s school in Victoria and later studied drawing and sculpture under Czech artist Jan Zack. After travels in Europe, Metcalfe returned to Victoria in 1963 to resume studies in art at the University of Victoria under Joan Brown, Denis Bowen, and Dana Atchley.

In the late 1960s, Metcalfe became involved with Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov in the Image Bank correspondence network. The movement was based on an aesthetic of ephemerality, with artists adopting alter egos, and forming fictional companies or building archives of collected images. It was during this time that Metcalfe developed the persona of Dr. Brute. In 1969, Metcalfe married artist Kate Craig (who adopted the alias Lady Brute) and, together, they collected materials with a leopard theme. Mail art correspondants contributed found images incorporating leopard imagery.

Dr. Brute was “an urban sadist meant to caricature the secret passions that smouldered underneath the veneer of genteel society in Brutiful British Columbia.” Brute occupied Brutopia, a fictional world that incorporated leopard-spot imagery in every possible way. Metcalfe’s Leopard Realty research, begun in 1970, was aimed at discovering and revealing the ubiquitous nature of ordinary exotica, synonymous with pornography and kitsch as well as a certain expression of sexual power.

Metcalfe also produced and performed in film and video extensively from 1972 onwards. He is a founding member of the Western Front artists’ centre in Vancouver and, from 1978, curated its performance program. His works have been exhibited and collected at numerous local, national, and international institutions.

Metcalfe was awarded the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts in 2006, he received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2008, and an Honorary Doctorate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2015.
1962-2007

Fluxus collection

81 cm of multiple media
The collection consists of Fluxus artworks in the form of cards, games, postcards and other media by various artists, including George Maciunas, Ben Vautier, Ken Friedman, Robert Filliou, George Brecht, and others. It also contains material related to Fluxus artwork such as catalogues and Fluxus ephemera.

History / Biography

Fluxus was an experimental art movement that emerged in the United States in the late 1950s. The movement later expanded to include artists from Europe and Japan such as Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Meiko Shiomi, and Milan Knízák. The movement itself resists definition, but appears to have developed in opposition to high modernist art practice, and in many ways harkened back to Dada art of the early twentieth century. These characteristics were reflected in the movement’s resistance to the art market and their close connection with the ideas of composer John Cage.

From 1956 to 1960, Cage taught classes in experimental composition at the New York School for Social Research. Cage’s pedagogical practice focused on encouraging students to experiment with mixed media, chance processes, and performance. The influence of Cage laid the groundwork for Fluxus art practice, which is reflected in the movement’s incorporation of everyday objects, anti-intellectualism, and playfulness in their works. Cage’s classes were attended by several Fluxus artists, including: George Brecht, Allan Kaprow, and possibly George Maciunas, although his name does not appear on the school’s list of registered students.

Nevertheless, Maciunas is widely considered to be the father of the Fluxus movement and to have coined the movement’s name. As in the case of many other Fluxus artists, Maciunas was influenced by Cage’s ideas on the integration of art and everyday life; however, Macuinas is considered to have taken these ideas further towards a more total blending of the two, where art no longer constituted a separate activity from daily life.

The art practice of Fluxus artists was fluid, incorporating elements of mixed media and performance, and moved freely between the visual and non-visual. Works included cards giving lists of instructions, small boxes consisting of games, and numerous happenings and performances of routine or predefined actions, such as eating lunch at the same time everyday. Fluxus art often included ephemeral objects such as handbills and loose pieces of paper. Many Fluxus objects were handmade assemblages of mass-produced items, including the hand bound Fluxus publications by Maciunas.

Due to the influence that Maciunas had on the movement, some scholars consider that Fluxus ended with his death in 1978. However, many artists who themselves identify with the movement, or have been grouped under this category by others, continued to create work under the Fluxus rubric.
1964-1998

Gary Lee-Nova fonds

24 cm of textual records and graphic material
The fonds consist of Gary Lee-Nova’s correspondence. Includes letters received and sent to friends, artists, and institutions; correspondence between Art Rat and Dr. Brute (Eric Metcalfe); The Dead Letter Funeral mail art project; and, Gary Lee-Nova’s copy of the Space Ace Atlas mail art project. Also includes photographs of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov at Image Bank.

History / Biography

Gary Lee-Nova was born in Toronto on June 26, 1943. He studied at the Vancouver School of Art and at Coventry College, England.

Lee-Nova was an important figure in the “West Coast scene” of the late 1960s and early 1970s and is known as a painter, sculptor and filmmaker. He was a co-founder of Image Bank (with Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov) and active in the Sound Gallery (circa 1965) and Intermedia (1967-1972). His use of the spectrum as a motif would begin the Image Bank’s ambitious Colour Bar Research project. In addition, Lee-Nova was involved with the New York Corres-Sponge Dance School of Vancouver, and worked under the pseudonym of Art Rat.

Lee-Nova continues to be active as an artist, working on single projects—often with others—that take years to execute. He is currently an instructor at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.
1978-1981, 2010

The Gina Show fonds

3.1 m of multiple media
The fonds consists of 63 episodes of The Gina Show on original ¾-inch tapes, DVD access copies, Betacam Master copies, Betacam Sub-Master copies, flyers used to advertise the television show, and descriptions of each episode (preserved as original hand-written and typed episode logs), as well as materials relating to a 2010 exhibition at the Or Gallery featuring The Gina Show and related archival materials.

Because of the inherent instability of the ¾-inch tapes only 63 of the episodes (approximately 28 hours) survived well enough to be transferred from the original format to archival or digital preservation/viewing formats.

History / Biography

The Gina Show was a Vancouver based local television art project produced by John Anderson (a.k.a. J.A. Genius) and hosted by Gina Daniels. It aired on public access cable, Vancouver Cable 10. The Gina Show began in 1978, at the height of the punk and media DIY movement and ran for four years. The show was closely associated with the artist run centre PUMPS. Over a three-year period over 90 episodes were made.

Each episode is between 20 and 30 minutes long. Content in each episode consists of a mix of feature segments ranging from video art and performance art documentation to interviews with artists and bands, poetry readings, promotions for art galleries and exhibitions, as well as music videos and early digital animation.

Some of the artists and groups who participated in The Gina Show in some capacity over the years include: Ken Kuramoto, Fabio Auri, Margaret Dragu, Kate Craig, Sanja Ivekovic, Liza Bear, David Enblom, Bill Shirt, Pete Lipski, Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Mike MacDonald, Chris Reed, Ken Lum, Roy Arden, Government, Ephemerealities, Hank Bull, Lenore Coutts, Byron Black, Taki Bluesinger, Eric Metcalfe, Ian Murray, Paul Wong, D.O.A., Ewan McNeil, Neal Livingston, Vincent Trasov, Paul Hyde, Gary Bourgeois, Mary Jane Kopechne, The Young Marble Giants, Stan Douglas, David Ostrem, Al McLauchlin, Glenn MacDonald, Kim Tomczak, and Matthew Harley.
1950-2007

Glenn Lewis fonds

3.06 m of textual records and graphic material
Fonds consists of textual and photographic material created or collected by artist Glenn Lewis. Includes records pertaining to and reflecting Lewis’ travels, employment, study, artist collectives and associations, and artistic projects from 1950 to 2007. Records consist of photographic materials (prints, slides and negatives), journals/day-planners, postcards, letters, lecture notes, manuscripts, articles, notes and miscellaneous writings, published books and catalogues, exhibition pamphlets and brochures, grant and commission information, legal documents, artwork and drawings, 1 CD and 1 DVD, and 3 ceramic pieces.

History / Biography

Glenn Lewis was born in Chemainus, British Columbia in 1935. He studied at the Vancouver School of Art, obtaining an Honours degree in 1958, and then a teaching degree from the University of British Columbia in 1959. He continued his studies in art under Bernard Leach in Cornwall, England, studying ceramics from 1961 to 1963. He then taught ceramics at the University of British Columbia from 1964 to 1967. Although an intensely important part of his artistic repertoire, his work with traditional pottery was replaced with an interest in the progressive avant-garde, including conceptual and performance art, in the 1960s. Always questioning the dialectic between conventional objects and art, social obligation and natural instinct, function and beauty, his past experience with sculpture played an important role in his new projects.

Much of his work between the 1960s and the 1980s included some aspect of sculpture or positioning as a questioning of the dichotomy between the static and the transient. He was fascinated with seeking commonality and human links revealed by conventional items and popular myth. He experimented with photography, film, and even horticulture, becoming increasingly interested in nature and topiary. He was involved in a number of artists’ collectives and artist-run centres, including the New Era Social Club in 1968 and the Western Front in 1973. Many of his works were collaborative and included members of these collectives, often questioning the perception of reality by a public manipulated by the media. New media in all types became the catalyst for much of his work through the 1980s and 1990s, an investigation into its power to influence and broadcast, and yet limit perception at the same time. This attention to new media eventually led to his appointment as Head of Media Arts at the Canada Council from 1987 to 1990. He was awarded with five Canada Council grants throughout his life. He was also awarded the prestigious “Emily” award from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2000, and the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2017.

Glenn Lewis currently lives and works in Vancouver.
[1964-2002, predominant 1970-1990]

Henry Greenhow fonds

65.5 cm of textual records and graphic material
The fonds is reflective of Greenhow’s relationships, involvement at the Western Front, and artists network he participated in primarily throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The fonds consists of a diverse collection of personal records including correspondence in the form of letters and postcards to friends and associates, photographic material, personal project research, exhibition invitations, performance programs, and related ephemera.

History / Biography

Cecil Henry (Hank) Greenhow is a Vancouver-based teacher and co-founder of the Western Front Society. Greenhow was involved throughout the 1970s in successfully developing the Western Front as “a space for the exploration and creation of new art forms” and a Canadian new media artist-run centre. Greenhow worked under the pseudonyms ‘Estelle Friend’ and ‘S.S. Tell,’ and the projects ‘Borderline Studios’ and ‘Butch Bank.’ Greenhow is best known for his published work Ziggurats (1974) and collaborative work the extended Western Front community.

Greenhow was born in Walkerville, Ontario January 27, 1935. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English at the University of Windsor in 1959, and a Master of Arts degree (cum laude) in 1963. From 1959 to 1967, Greenhow held various positions teaching English Literature at the secondary and post-secondary level across Ontario and divided his time between Ontario and Detroit, Michigan where he shared an apartment with life-long friend Dr. J. Norman Austin.

In 1967, Greenhow moved from Ontario to Vancouver, British Columbia to pursue further graduate studies. He continued working in the field of education as a teaching assistant at the University of British Columbia (1967 to 1968) and finally as a long-term instructor at Vancouver City College Langara (1969 to 1998). Through connections made at UBC and his interests, Greenhow developed a network of friends and colleagues associated with Vancouver’s emerging avant-garde art and poetry movements.

In 1973, Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov, Maurice (Moe) van Nostrand, Martin Bartlett, Glenn Lewis, Eric Metcalfe, Kate Craig, and Greenhow purchased the former Knights of Pythias Hall at 303 East 8th Street in Vancouver. The purchase was aided greatly by the fact that Greenhow, then teaching in the English department and Langara College, and Lewis were the only two founding members with a steady income. Named after the iconic look of buildings in Hollywood Western movies, the Hall was transformed into the Western Front Society, conceived as a centre for artists, writers, musicians, and various creative types. The Western Front operated in relation to, and each founding member’s practice was guided by, the ethos of the ‘Eternal Network.’ Together, the eight founding members established the artist-run centre as an important node in Western Canada for the collective, and ultimately collaborative, approach to art creation that defined the 1970s and 1980s.

Of note is Greenhow’s 1974 show Ziggurats at the Western Front Ziggurats. Sponsored in part by the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Pacific Vibrations exhibition, Ziggurats was a display of slides featuring the Image Bank’s Colour Bar Research project, Eric Metcalfe’s Leopard Realty, and the accompanying text by Greenhow, Ziggurats. The show is evidence of the collaborative, social, and jovial approach to art production and work by members of the Western Front. Greenhow’s involvement also included curatorial work in the mid-1970s and the publication of Ziggurats by Air Press in 1976.

The publication Ziggurats was part of a varied and ongoing exploarion of ziggurat forms by Greenhow. Developed at ‘Babyland’—Morris’ summer cabin near Gibsons, British Columbia—the ziggurats project developed alongside Morris and Trasov’s colour bars project. Of note as well is Butch Bank, Greenhow’s personal exploration of conceptions and depictions of masculinity and collaborative art project.

Greenhow lived at the Western Front from February 1974 to mid-1977 and again from July 1986 to December 1989 and was one of the first members of the Board of Directors, sitting on the board almost every year from 1974 to 1989. He was also in close contact with affiliated artists and collectives including Dana Atchley, General Idea, Opal L. Nations, Lowell Darling, Willoughby Sharp, and Robert Filliou. Finally, in 1996 Greenhow sold his eighth of the share in the property to Peter Bingham. He retired from Langara College in 1998.

Henry Greenhow died July 7, 2017.
1965-2010

Hermann Nitsch collection

48 cm of multiple media
The collection consists of Nitsch’s books, catalogues, posters, letters, framed items, objects, videocassettes, and reel audio relating mostly to performances by Nitsch with some material relating to his geräuschmusik and paintings.

History / Biography

Hermann Nitsch was born in 1938 and received training in painting at the Wiener Graphische Lehr-und Versuchanstalt in Vienna, Austria. The media of Nitsch’s work is varied, but he has focused on abstract splatter paintings and performances, mostly his Aktion series of performances and Das Orgien Mysterien Theater series of performances. Nitsch is also a musician.

Nitsch is often associated with the Viennese Actionists, a group of loosely affiliated artists working with action art, a composite term for performance related activities including Fluxus, Happenings, Performance Art, and Body Art.

Viennese Actionism, as it has been described, developed in conjunction with Performance Art and Fluxus and, similar to these movements, it shared the rejection of object-based art. It was focused on the aesthetics of destruction, violence, and in the case of Hermann Nitsch, blood. Many Vienna Actionist art projects involved the simulation of violence, the use of nudity, and animal carcasses. Nitsch views this movement, not as cohesive, but as “a number of artists react[ing] to particular situations that they all encountered, within a particular time period, and with similar means and results.” The movement was active between 1960 and 1971, but some of the artists have, like Nitsch, continued to work in a similar vein. A number of the artists, including Nitsch, served jail time as a result of the moral outrage generated by their work.

Most of Nitsch’s work is characterized by a theme of controlled violence, an aestheticization of that violence and ritualism. His paintings are usually composed of colours reminiscent of blood and violence through the application of greys, maroons, and bright reds. His early performances focused on simulating violence on human bodies, but moved towards the use of animal carcasses as a medium. Most of his performances are referred to as Aktion and denoted by a sequential number (eg. 16. Aktion).

In Nitsch’s performances, animal carcasses are often mutilated and crucified ritualistically, in combination with the addition of other ceremonial elements such as red fruit, music, dancing, and active participants. Many of his performances are also accompanied by his geräuschmusik or noise music that uses an assortment of atonal sounds to create music.

Later in his career, Nitsch became significantly more accepted by the Austrian establishment and was commissioned to do set and costume design for the opera Hérodiade in 1995. He continues to live and work in Vienna releasing music and doing performances.
1970-1990

Jerry Pethick fonds

7 notebooks ; 29.5 x 24.5 cm or smaller
The fonds consists of notebooks used by Jerry Pethick to record thoughts, ideas for new art works, lists, addresses, and poems.

History / Biography

Jerry Pethick, a sculptor and multimedia artist, was born in London, Ontario in 1935. In 1957 he left Canada to study at the Chelsea College of Art in the UK and subsequently became an associate of the Royal College of Art. In 1968, he moved to the United States to study holography in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and later cofounded a holography school in San Francisco before settling on Hornby Island with his wife and son in 1975.

Pethick first became known for his pioneering work with holography during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The disruption of visual perception and the experiential nature of art remained central to his work throughout his career, which culminated in large-scale photographic arrays and playful sculptures through the 1990s and early 2000s. He often incorporated found objects from the recycling depot on Hornby Island, juxtaposing their junkyard qualities with a sophisticated and rigourous fascination with science, technology, and art history in works that are both visual and conceptual.

Pethick lived and worked on Hornby Island until his death, July 7, 2003.
1992-1993

John Gilmore collection

2 cm of textual records and audio recordings
The collection consists of materials created and collected by John Gilmore for the purpose of writing “Virtual Reality” for Saturday Night. It includes notes, drafts, transcriptions, and the original tapes of interviews with Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun conducted by Gilmore.

History / Biography

John Gilmore was born in Montreal in 1951. In 1972 he graduated from Sir George Williams University Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel program. He spent two years in Bridgend, Wales training to be a journalist. When he returned to Montreal he worked for The Gazette and began to study saxophone.

In 1978 he became a full time student at Concordia University in their jazz program, graduating in 1981 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music. While a student at Concordia he developed an interest in local jazz history. With the help of a Canada Council grant he researched and wrote two books Swinging in Paradise: The Story of Jazz in Montreal (1988) and Who’s Who of Jazz in Montreal: Ragtime to 1970 (1989).

In 1992 John Gilmore was commissioned by Saturday Night (a Canadian general interest magazine, which ceased publishing in 2005) to write an article about Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s piece Inherent Rights, Vision Rights created in 1992 as a visiting artist to the Banff Centre for the Arts working in their Virtual Reality Laboratory. The resulting article was published in the April 1993 issue of Saturday Night and entitled “Virtual Reality.”

Gilmore has worked as an author, journalist, editor, and ESL teacher.
1973-1976

John Mitchell collection

The collection consists of records generated by John Mitchell, including drawings, collages, letters and an artist book, as well as various records, predominantly photographic, created or collected by Keith Donovan that capture John Mitchell’s 1974 campaign performance and the PUMPS and Vancouver art scenes in the 1970s.

History / Biography

John Mitchell was a founding member of the artist-run PUMPS group. He often used the pseudonym “Mitchelangelo.” Mitchell’s oeuvre includes video, writing, sculpture, drawing, and performance pieces. He ideated the mayoral campaign of Vincent Trasov as Mr. Peanut in the 1974 Vancouver civic election, and also acted as Mr. Peanut’s campaign manager and spokesperson in the 20-day performance.
1951-2004

John Reeve/Donna Balma fonds

33.25 cm of textual records and graphic material
The fonds consists of correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, memoirs, and ephemera relating mainly to John Reeve and Donna Balma’s work and life in England at St. Ives.

History / Biography

John Reeve, born in Barrie, Ontario in 1929, married Donna Balma, born 1934 in Victoria, British Columbia. They were both artists—Reeve a potter and Balma a self-taught painter and writer. Reeve studied sculpture and later ceramics at the Vancouver School of Art in 1955. He and Balma went to England in 1958 so that Reeve could study ceramics under Bernard Leach and his wife, Janet in the Cornish fishing village of St Ives. Along with the other British Columbian artists studying and working there (including Glenn Lewis and Michael Henry) they became known for the sort of artist collective and modern poetry movement that developed out of this study under Bernard Leach. They had two children, Hanna, while at St. Ives and Soledad, born in Victoria upon their return to Canada.

At this time in art history in Canada, pottery began to be considered as art and not merely as functional craft. After the two-and-a-half-year apprenticeship at St. Ives Pottery, Reeve and Balma returned to Canada and Reeve taught at UBC. They returned to England in 1962 where he established a pottery with Glenn Lewis and Warren Mackenzie called Longlands, which was closed a few years later due to financial difficulties. In 1966, Reeve and Balma again returned to England upon invitation from Janet Leach to oversee the Leach Pottery.

During the 1970s, Reeve taught at the Vancouver School of Art and published two pivotal books on pottery glazing. Later he commuted from California to Vancouver to a Granville Island pottery studio which he shared with two of his former students, Sam Kwan and Ron Vallis. During this time, Reeve’s work was featured in many Canadian galleries.

Reeve and Balma separated shortly after November 1974, when they left England for the last time and returned to the Sunshine Coast, BC, where both worked at Michael Henry’s Slug Pottery. Reeve then moved to New Mexico to work as a lecturer and a teacher, and transitioned from creating functional ceramics to large sculptures. Balma, a registered massage therapist and self-taught artist, continued live on the Sunshine Coast, producing bold, complex, illustrious and dreamlike paintings (often dubbed surreal in genre), and publishing works of fiction and art history.
1952-2002

Kate Craig fonds

3.7 m of textual records and other material
Fonds reflects Kate Craig’s career as a multi-media artist in Vancouver and involvement in the Western Front Society.

The fonds includes records relating to Craig’s career as an artist: correspondence with other artists, art project planning files and notebooks, documentation of exhibitions, collected ephemera (including postcards), financial records of the Western Front, grant applications, and collected published materials. Personal records in the fonds include: letters to friends and family, appointment diaries, journals, financial records and family photographs.

History / Biography

Kate Craig was a Canadian multi-media artist, whose work spanned the areas of costume, film, performance, and photography. Craig collaborated with many different artists throughout her career, working on various projects and assuming many different artistic personae, most notably ‘Lady Brute’.

Kate (Catherine) Shand Craig was born September 15, 1947 in Victoria, British Columbia, to Sidney Osborne Craig (nee Scott) and Charles Edward Craig. In 1960 after her divorce from Charles Craig, Craig’s mother married Douglas Shadbolt and the family moved to Montreal, Quebec. They spent one year in Montreal before moving to Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1964, Craig enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts and Science program at Dalhousie University but dropped out in 1966 and moved to Montreal to work in the costume department of Le Theatre du Nouveau Monde.

In 1967, Craig moved to Victoria, and began studying at the University of Victoria, where she met the artist Eric Metcalfe. Craig and Metcalfe began living together, and were married in 1969. Craig also met Dana Atchley while at the University of Victoria, and became involved in several mail art networks, including: Image Bank, International Image Exchange Directory, and the first International Satellite Exchange Directory. During 1970 and 1971, Craig travelled with Metcalfe around Europe. Upon returning to Canada, they moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. At this time they assumed the personas of Doctor Brute and Lady Brute.

In 1973, Craig co-founded the Western Front Society with artists Martin Bartlett, Henry Greenhow, Glenn Lewis, Eric Metcalfe, Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov, and Moe Van Nostrand. The location of the Western Front Society at 303 East 8th Avenue was a focal point and source of collaborations throughout her career. Craig was on the board of directors of the Western Front, working full time in its administration from 1973 to 1993. In 1977, Craig established the Artist in Residence at The Western Front, and curated the media program until 1993. Craig continued to be involved as a volunteer at The Western Front after 1993.

In 1973, Craig met artist Hank Bull, and they started living together. In 1974, Craig performed _Flying Leopard_ in Cates Park and Hornby Island. In 1975, Craig produced her first video Skins: Lady Brute Presents Her Leopardskin Wardrobe. Also in 1975, Craig and Metcalfe exhibited Dr. and Lady Brute Present Spots Before Your Eyes at Western Front and A Space. In 1976, Craig co-founded The Canadian Shadow Players with Hank Bull, Patrick Ready, and Martin Bartlett. In the years after 1976, Craig spent around eight weeks during each summer at her cabin in Storm Bay, a wilderness camp in the Sechelt Inlet north of Vancouver.

From the late 1970s through the 1980s, Craig produced many films, including: Backup (1978), Still Life: A Moving Portrait (screened 1979), Straight Jacket (1980), Delicate Issue (screened 1981), Ma (1986), and Mary Lou (1989). In 1980 and 1981, Craig travelled around the world with Hank Bull, visiting many countries. In 1986, Clay Cove was exhibited as part of Luminous Sites, at Park Place, Vancouver. In 1990, Craig married Hank Bull. In her later life she was involved in the Fragrant Flora nursery with Glenn Lewis, and remained active in the Vancouver art community. Skin, a retrospective exhibition of Craig’s work was held at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1998.

In 2002, Kate Craig died of cancer at her cabin at Storm Bay.
1937-1987; predominant 1952-1981

Kenneth Coutts-Smith fonds

4.27 m of textual records and other material
The fonds consists of correspondence, notebooks, manuscripts, drafts and proofs of essays, articles, art reviews, and lectures, books, poetry, short stories and a novel, curricula vitae, drawings, prints, posters, audio and video recordings, films, photographic prints, negatives and transparencies, scrapbook, exhibition catalogues, newspaper cuttings and other periodicals, a collection of material about artists, and miscellaneous items.

Some of the material in the fonds were added by Helen K. Wright, who organized posthumous shows and gave lectures on Coutts-Smith’s works, and gathered obituaries and other material relating to her deceased former husband.

History / Biography

Kenneth Coutts-Smith was a British artist, critic, and historian of art and culture, born September 1929 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied painting at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art (London) and the Grande Chaumiére (Paris). His first solo exhibitions in the United Kingdom and France in 1952 were followed by shows in Stockholm in 1953, Strasbourg in 1954, and several shows in London 1957 to 1965. As well as painting during these years, Coutts-Smith also wrote and published poetry, short stories, and a novel, Fuglefrith, and began a career as a journalist of art and society, publishing numerous reviews, articles, interviews, and catalogue introductions. He was also active as a gallery administrator in London from 1962 to 1969, as secretary of the Drian Gallery, London, managing the New Vision Centre gallery, and as organizing secretary of the Commonwealth Biennale of Abstract Art. Complementing his activity as an art critic dating from around 1963, Coutts-Smith began to lecture widely in England and accepted teaching appointments at Liverpool College of Art in 1967 and Harrow College of Art, London, in 1968. Critical study of art and society led to two books published in his lifetime, The Dream of Icarus and Dada, which appeared in 1970. A third, The Demise of the Avant-Garde, collected together essays from the decade 1970 to 1980, and is yet to be published posthumously. In the years after his death there was an effort made to publish the manuscript, and again in the early 1990s when the material was donated to the Belkin Art Gallery.

In 1970 Coutts-Smith emigrated to Canada, teaching as a professor at the University of Calgary, University of Manitoba, York University in Toronto, and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, continuing to be active as a curator, from 1974 at Gallery 111, Winnipeg, lecturing in Europe, North America and Australia, and producing film and video works as well as mail art and paintings, notably the series Artexts shown in Halifax in 1980. He took considerable interest in contemporary art of Eastern Europe, collecting works by Yugoslav artists, and traveled also to study Canadian Inuit artists in 1975 and Australian aboriginal communities in 1980.

Coutts-Smith died in 1981 in Toronto, Canada.
1969-1976

“Master of the West End” collection

627 photographs : col. slides ; 35 mm
The collection consists of colour slides, mainly depicting the West End of Vancouver. A number of themes run throughout the collection: sunsets, street scenes, buildings in the West End, gardens, and most notably, homoerotic images of nude and semi-nude males. There are also a small number of slides taken in other locations, such as Toronto.

History / Biography

The photographer of this collection is unknown, although they likely lived in the West End of Vancouver during the period the images were captured. The slides were purchased at a flea market by Alex Morrison, and gifted to Vancouver artist Roy Arden.
1935-2000; predominant 1952-2000

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery fonds

13.4 m of textual records and other material
The fonds consists of records relating to the history and administration of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. These materials include: budgets, correspondence, memorandums, agendas, minutes, pamphlets, booklets, catalogues, list of works, appraisals, newspaper clippings, magazines, reports, terms of reference, renderings, plans, videos, sound recordings, photographs, slides, negatives, proposals, invoices, requisitions, condition reports, application forms, inventory sheets, purchase orders, plaques, donation remittances, handwritten notes, newsletters, artists statements, biographies, and invitations.

History / Biography

The University Art Centre opened December 4th, 1948 as a result of the efforts of the University Fine Arts Committee, the Visual Arts Committee and thanks to a gift from the University Hill of the I.O.D.E (Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire). The University Hill gift was meant not only to create the University Art Centre but also for the purpose of establishing a memorial to the late Dean Mary L. Bollert who was an Honorary Regent of the Chapter. It was hoped that:

“With this Art Gallery and Art Workshop providing the stimulus, new artistic sensibility will be developed and new creative gifts will be uncovered that will enrich and heighten the repute of the University, the City and the Province. And in due course, that will enrich life and improved fame will create fresh demand for further artistic growth—for, first, a University Chair in Art and, ultimately, a University Department of Fine Arts.”

The Centre was located in the basement of the North Wing of the Main Library and operated under the direction of the University Fine Arts Committee. It served as an exhibition space and educational centre until the Fine Arts Department was established in 1955, when it became the UBC Fine Arts Gallery. After the Department’s creation it assumed responsibility for the Gallery, and in 1962 Alvin Balkind became curator. Balkind focused resources on a program to experiment in art, design and curating. His tenure (1962-1973) coincided with the emergence of Vancouver’s awareness of international contemporary art, and he was integral in fostering this awareness by bringing a number of influential contemporary artists to the city such as Ray Johnson. When he left, the gallery almost closed, because it had flourished through his energy and not through university funding.

However, in 1975 Glenn Allison became director and he initiated a program of asking artists to conceive site-specific installations for the space. He also continued Alvin Balkind’s initiative of focusing on contemporary art. In 1989, Scott Watson, the current gallery director was appointed and has continued the legacy established by Balkind and Allison, making Vancouver a premier centre for contemporary art in Canada.

Between 1950-1987 there were many attempts to have a gallery built on University grounds but none up to that point were ever realized. This changed in 1987 when, Helen Belkin presented the university with a considerable monetary gift. The university matched her gift in order to create the building budget, which was put towards the construction of a new gallery. In 1995, construction was completed and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery was opened. The building itself was designed by Vancouver architect Peter Cardew and has received international acclaim for its architectural innovation.

The gallery is not comprised of any Board or legislated advisory committee, but operates as an academic unit of the University. Before 1990, the official director of the gallery was the Head of the Fine Arts Department, although in practice the curator was responsible for the direction and operation of the gallery. The realities of the situation initiated a process through which the gallery became an independent unit, monitoring its own budget and answering directly to the Dean of Arts rather than to the Fine Arts Department. After 1990, the gallery curator officially became Director and an independent entity from the Fine Arts Department.

The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery’s mandate is to research, exhibit, collect, publish, educate and develop programs in the field of contemporary art and in contemporary approaches to the practice of art history and criticism. The gallery is not limited to a particular media or disciplines. However, it places special emphasis on the areas of the Canadian avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s, the international network developed at the time and its role in the art of today; emerging artists; Vancouver’s post-war history; practices and projects that challenge the status quo including exhibition concepts initiated by artists. The gallery, since 1992, is also responsible for the University Art Collection.

The Gallery’s operations, exhibitions, programs and acquisitions are funded in part by the UBC Faculty of Arts, the Belkin Family Foundation Operating Endowment, the Belkin Gallery Endowment for Acquisitions and Exhibitions, private and corporate sponsorship and government arts funding agencies.
1932-1990, predominant 1969-1974

Morris/Trasov Archive

80 m of graphic and other material
The collection consists of material created and collected by Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov, including their collaborations as Image Bank. The materials relate to exhibitions such as 1984 (1972), Post Card Show (1971 and 1977), to projects such as Colour Bars, Cultural Ecology, and to events such as Art’s Birthday, Decca Dance, and the Miss General Idea Pageant (and Pavilion).

The collection also documents collaborative encounters with artists such as Robert Filliou, General Idea, Robert Fones, Robert Cumming, Ray Johnson, John Dowd, Anna Banana, Bill Gaglione, Eric Metcalfe, Kate Craig, John Jack Baylin, Hervé Fischer, Victor Cavellini, Hermann Nitsch, and Fluxus artists. The Archive documents the mayoralty campaign by Mr. Peanut and the establishment of the Western Front—one of the first artist run centres in Western Canada. The Archive also contains numerous publications such as FILE Megazine, catalogues and artists’ books, and editions of cards.

Further, the Archive includes an extensive collection of material complementing Morris’ and Trasov’s personal fonds, such as books, periodicals, and other published material as well as art in multiple forms and media, including artist books, moving image and sound recordings, collages, correspondence, ephemera, exhibition catalogues, found objects, mailings, magazines, multiples and editions of cards, photographic prints, negatives, slides and transparencies, postcards, posters, drawings, and prints.

History / Biography

Established in 1992, the Morris/Trasov Archive is an extensive collection related to the art practices of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov. Conceived and initiated as Image Bank in 1969 and subsequently re-named the Morris/Trasov Archive, it encompasses both the collaborative art practice of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov and material generated by Morris and Trasov individually, as well as other items collected by the artists.

Morris and Trasov founded the Image Bank in 1969. The Image Bank was a system of postal correspondence between participating artists for the exchange of information and ideas. Since 1967, Morris (and later Trasov) corresponded with Ray Johnson, considered to be the founding father of mail art. Johnson had founded the New York Correspondence School in 1962, and this no doubt influenced Morris and Trasov’s establishment of the Image Bank. In fact, the artists were included in Johnson’s 1970 New York Correspondence School exhibition at the Whitney Museum, New York. The Image Bank commenced sending lists of participants and their image requests, published first in monthly Image Bank mailings and later in FILE Megazine—a reference and antidote to LIFE Magazine—as directories and request lists, and maintained files of artists’ correspondence and research.

The intention of the Image Bank was to create a collaborative, process-based project in the hopes of engendering a shared creative consciousness—in opposition to the alienation endemic to modern capitalist society—through the deconstruction and recombination of its ideological forms. Ultimately, “Image Bank never officially closed its doors. The end came in 1978 after the publication of the Image Bank Postcard Show. This was a box of postcards that could be conceived of as an exhibition destined for the mail. Just as LIFE magazine sued FILE Megazine to cease and desist the appropriation of its logo, a New York company called Image Bank threatened suit against Image Bank, stalling distribution of the postcards through bookstores and gallery shops.” (Scott Watson, Hand of the Spirit: Documents of the Seventies form the Morris/ Trasov Archive, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery, 1992.)
1970-

Mr. Peanut collection

5.5 cm of graphic material and objects
The collection contains materials generated by Vincent Trasov relating to the Mr. Peanut character in general and to the 1974 mayoralty campaign, and materials generated by others relating to the same subject. The collection contains predominantly graphic materials in the form of ephemera, as well as objects such as ceramic peanuts and a commemorative plate.

History / Biography

Between 1969 and 1974 the artist Vincent Trasov (b. 1947) appropriated the persona (and appearance) of the iconic advertising mascot, Mr. Peanut. As Mr. Peanut, Trasov, with the assistance of artist John Mitchell, orchestrated a performance art event running for mayor in the Vancouver mayoralty campaign of 1974. During the twenty day race, Mr. Peanut appeared at candidates meetings and similar events with the other mayoral hopefuls. During these events, Mitchell spoke for Mr. Peanut who remained silent, but managed to shake up the usually staid election process and also brought increased media attention to the city. Mr. Peanut ran on a platform of P for performance, E for elegance, A for Art, N for nonsense, U for uniqueness, and T for talent and served as a symbol for artists and their aspirations. Mr. Peanut lost the race, but won 3.4% of the vote. After 1974, Trasov retired the Mr. Peanut costume, but Mr. Peanut imagery and the “Mr. Peanut for Mayor” campaign continued to inform his artistic practice.
1978-1994

Peter Schuyff fonds

20 cm of graphic material
The fonds consists of mail art received by Peter Schuyff from Ray Johnson, including collages, clippings, assemblages, photocopied works, and other graphic material.

History / Biography

Peter Schuyff was born in Baam, Holland in 1958. He and his family moved to Vancouver in 1967 where he spent the remainder of his childhood. After high school, he enrolled at the Vancouver School of Art, where he studied for a year and a half. After leaving school he painted in Vancouver, where artist Michael Morris became a friend and mentor. In 1981 Schuyff moved to New York to pursue his career as an artist. Schuyff’s paintings have since evolved to depict biomorphic forms and vibrantly colored, light filled grids and template patterns.

While in New York, Schuyff corresponded with artist Ray Johnson, the founder of the New York Correspondance School and the father of mail art. Schuyff’s correspondence with Johnson dates back to the late 1970s but became most intense after his move to New York. In a 1989 letter to Michael Morris, Schuyff notes “Ray Johnson and I have been corresponding a lot too, as much as three times a week.”

Schuyff is a well-known artist in his own right. He has shown his paintings in a number of solo exhibitions in New York, in addition to Los Angeles, Geneva, Cologne, Paris, Rome Amsterdam and other cities. His work has also been shown at group exhibitions at the Drawing Centre in New York, the Milwaukee Art Gallery, and many others. His work has also been highlighted in numerous fine arts periodicals, including Artforum, Flashart, Art in America and others. Peter Schuyff currently lives and works in New York and Vancouver.
1950-1997

Peter White’s It Pays to Play collection

2.33 m of textual records
The collection consists of material collected and generated in the process of curating an exhibition of postcards at Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver. The collection is divided into three series: It Pays to Play postcards, It Pays to Play gallery files (including catalogue), and postcards collected as source material in the research process, but not exhibited.

History / Biography

The It Pays to Play exhibition presented a history of British Columbia as represented in popular, photographic colour postcards from the early 1950s through the emergence in the 1980s of the present post-industrial, global economy. One of the primary concerns of the project was the interplay of history and representation—how the way a subject is known and understood is integrally related to the manner of its representation. To this end, the exhibition was conceived to provide reflection on how optimistic values of the era and aspects of public identity were constructed and entrenched in popular culture and how its ideological biases were calculated by the stereotypical, promotional, and repetitive imagery of the common postcard.

The exhibition originated at Presentation House Gallery, and was curated by Peter White, with funding provided in part by the Canada Council. The exhibition toured to other venues across Canada, including the following:

Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver, February 24 – March 31, 1996

Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, June 29 – September 14, 1996

Oboro, Montreal, February 22 – March 23, 1997

Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, April 17 – June 1, 1997

Plug In Gallery, Winnipeg, November 13 – December 13, 1997.
1975-1980

PUMPS fonds

31 cm of graphic material and textual records
The fonds consists of material documenting and advertising events at PUMPS, and to some extent the private lives of those living and working in the space. Material includes slides, photographs, cards, leaflets and posters, and other textual material, as well as the photographs and artwork of PUMPS artist David Larson.

History / Biography

“PUMPS Centre for the Arts” opened in 1975 in a building previously occupied by the “Pumps and Power” company, on East Cordova St. in the Gastown area of downtown Vancouver. Its founders included Kim Tomczak, Rick Hambleton, Sandra Janz, Chris Reed, David Larson, John Mitchell, and other former members of the Downtown Artists Association, which had formed in 1974. Emerging from the tradition of communal activity and performance associated with Intermedia and the Western Front, with whom they existed cooperatively, PUMPS nonetheless operated on a somewhat different wavelength than its predecessors. Determined to act as a more oppositional force in the art world and society, and to reach a wider audience, it was more closely aligned with the urban, edginess of the punk rock scene.

In 1976, PUMPS began to function as an artists’ resource centre, with studios, residences, a library, and a sizable gallery devoted to exhibitions, screenings and performances by its members and other guest artists. With no specific curatorial policy, the gallery was instead committed to exhibiting the work of younger artists in the downtown core. Eventually, the group developed facilities for the creation of music, film and video productions, fostering the collaboration of artists on multidisciplinary projects. Notable endeavors included Gordon Kidd’s experimental film series in 1977, as well as various exhibitions of multimedia and performance art by Roy Kiyooka, Eric Metcalfe, Robert Young, Roy Arden, Hank Bull, and others.

Sustained almost entirely by membership support, artists had to function cooperatively to assist in the maintenance of the gallery and other facilities, and the advertising and promotion of their activities. In 1980, cuts in Canada Council funding placed increased financial strain on the collective. Furthermore, critical founding members Tomczak, Janz, and Reed viewed the project as “a five-year experiment” which had accomplished all it could within the framework and locality in which they were functioning. When they left Vancouver to pursue other projects in 1980, PUMPS ceased its operations.
1987-1999

Rodney Graham fonds

9 cm of textual records and other material
The fonds consists of records relating to Rodney Graham’s work Vexation Island and other projects. Includes photographs, financial records, audio recordings, correspondence, promotional materials, technical drawings and information, newspaper clippings, sketches, and other materials.

History / Biography

Born in 1949 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Rodney Graham studied fine arts at the University of British Columbia from 1968 to 1971 and at Simon Fraser University from 1978 to 1979.

Beginning with a series of solo shows in the late 1980s, he has exhibited widely in North America and Europe, including at Documenta IX, 1992, and in the Biennale of Venice, 1997, where he represented Canada. Graham has gained international recognition for his work in both video and photography and has shown at Dia Center for the Arts, New York, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Kunsthalle Wein, Vienna, and Kunstverein Münster, Munster and many others. His work is found in a number of public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Using film, literary texts, musical scores and repeated photographic images, Graham’s work is said to transcend the discourse of contemporary visual art, bringing other disciplines and time frames into its imaginative frame.
1978-1997

Roy Arden collection

10 cm of textual records and other materials
The collection consists of distinct groups of materials and ephemera all collected and donated by Roy Arden. The collection has therefore been divided into series separating the materials by where and by whom they were originally generated.

The first series consists of materials relating to the PUMPS Gallery and associated artists, and the second series consists of materials associated with the artist Rodney Graham. The third series consists of posters by Lawrence Wiener and Felix Gonzales-Torres.

History / Biography

Roy Arden was born in Vancouver in 1957. He completed a diploma from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1982 and received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia in 1990. Since the early 1980s Arden has been exhibiting nationally and internationally. He remains very active in the Vancouver art scene, curating, writing, and showing his own work locally and globally. Arden has taught at the University of British Columbia, Emily Carr College of Art and Design, University of Art and Design in Helsinki, and the Visual Arts Academy or Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig.

Arden is one of Canada’s most respected artists. Along with Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Rodney Graham, and Stan Douglas, his work has contributed to Vancouver’s reputation as a vital centre for contemporary photographic art. The city of Vancouver is often the subject of his work. In his “the landscape of the economy” themed work he focuses on the constant transformations of urban Vancouver, documenting the social and economic history of his city.
1969-1993

Roy Kiyooka fonds

ca. 5700 photographs and other material
The fonds consists of material created and accumulated by Roy Kiyooka over his artistic career, and includes photographs, prints, publications, artworks given to him by friends, cards and posters. The photographic material shot by Kiyooka covers a span of over three decades and is predominantly source material and personal photographs. None of the material in the fonds was used or should be considered as finished artworks, although similar images were incorporated into Kiyooka’s artwork. The photographic materials are in a wide variety of photographic media and dimensions, including colour and black and white prints of various sizes, 35mm negative strips, contact sheets, slides, transparencies and other formats. The fonds also includes a small number of prints (possibly lithographs, and 1 etching) and photographs that appear to be gifts from friends and acquaintances. Also included are catalogues and other publications that are by or about Kiyooka, and exhibition catalogues relating to Vancouver and BC artists he collected.

History / Biography

Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in 1926, Roy Kiyooka grew up in Calgary during the pre-World War II years. He studied at the Alberta College of Art in the 1940s under Jock MacDonald and Illingworth Kerr. In 1955 he won a scholarship to the Institutio Allende in Mexico, where he studied under James Pinto. During the summers between 1956 and 1960, Kiyooka attended the Artists’ workshops at Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, where he worked under two American leading abstract artists: Will Barnet and Barnett Newman. In the early 1960s, Kiyooka moved to Vancouver and soon became a leader in the city’s emergent artistic community. In the next two decades, he embarked on a remarkable career as an artist, and traveled across Canada to Calgary, Regina, Halifax and made many trips to Japan.

He became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1965, and represented Canada at the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil, where he was awarded a silver medal. In 1967 his work was exhibited at Expo in Montreal and in every major centennial show across Canada.

Moving to Halifax to teach at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design also coincided with Kiyooka’s long-standing disaffection with the prevailing politics and morality of the art establishment, and his decision to distance himself from the studio. Kiyooka never did return to painting after 1969; he continued to teach painting and remained a visual artist in other media until his death in 1994. He also attained standing as a highly respected poet and was an influential figure in local and national art circles. His importance was recognized with membership in the Order of Canada in 1975 and with status as Professor Emeritus in the Department of Fine Arts of the University of British Columbia. In the course of his career, he generated a body of multimedia and interdisciplinary work that encompassed acrylic paintings, oil paintings, watercolours, prints, photography, collages, photomontages, sculptures, films, and poetry.
1951-1978

Russell FitzGerald fonds

25 cm of textual records and other material
The fonds consists of records generated by Russell FitzGerald during the course of his adult life and includes journals, sketchbooks, ephemera, art reproductions and originals, and photographs.

History / Biography

Russell Richard FitzGerald was an American artist born on December 29, 1932 Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

FitzGerald studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in the early 1950s and moved to North Beach, San Francisco in 1957 where he associated with the group of artists that defined the San Francisco Renaissance of the poetic avant-garde in the 50s and included poets Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser.

Although he identified primarily as a homosexual and was involved with many men, including Jack Spicer in the 1950s, FitzGerald eventually married Dora Dull, the partner of poet Harold Dull, in 1963. The two acted as parents to Dora’s twin girls (fathered by Harold Dull) until FitzGerald’s death in 1978.

FitzGerald was a Catholic and his art often incorporates religious iconography, reflecting his interests in alchemy, theology, spiritual life and mythology. Strong accompanying themes of sexuality and anti-racism create an interesting tension in many of the works. He was greatly influenced by William Blake and often combined imagery with literary texts. As an illustrator as well as a painter, FitzGerald’s work appeared on the covers of science fiction books and magazines and on the cover of Dora’s translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Das Marienleben (Life of the Virgin Mary), which appeared in The Capilano Review #26, 1983.

FitzGerald also wrote prose and read widely including writers such as Oscar Wilde, Virginia Wolfe, James Joyce, Shakespeare, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Andre Gide, Walt Whitman, Dante, Baudelaire, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, Graham Greene, Jean Cocteau, Lorca, Thomas Merton, and Margaret Lawrence.

FitzGerald was financially supported by Dora as he worked on his art but his life and work were adversely affected by alcohol addiction and periods of drug abuse. During the 1960s FitzGerald lived in New York City until 1970 when he, Dora and the twins moved to Vancouver in an effort to end his heroin addiction. Despite many attempts to give up drinking, by the time of his death FitzGerald’s marriage was failing and he was in ill health with a severely damaged liver.

Despite his efforts, FitzGerald did not enter the mainstream art world in San Francisco or New York. He remains virtually unknown outside of a few select circles and his visionary, anti-modernist work is not part of any artistic canon.

FitzGerald’s final journal entry tells of a sudden trip from San Francisco to Vancouver and an ensuing “alcoholic fugue.” One month later he died at the age of 46 on March 30, 1978.
1983

Sax Island collection

13 cm of graphic material and textual records
The collection consists predominantly of works by Eric Metcalfe, with two paintings by Hank Bull. Includes storyboards, original drawings, photocopies, props, and promotional materials.

History / Biography

Sax Island is a 12-minute colour video created by Eric Metcalfe and Hank Bull in 1984. It was commissioned by The Music Gallery (Toronto), and produced by the Western Front. The story focuses on a visit to Sax Island by international torturers and slavers for a secret meeting. Metcalfe created a storyboard of over 300 original drawings, which were subsequently shot on video, layered with actors and special effects, and sound added in a live recording session performance on October 29, 1983 in Toronto. The hand-painted sets and comic book dialogue are incorporated into the adventures of the inhabitants of the island.
1964-2015

Tom Burrows fonds

58.6 cm of textual records and graphic materials
The fonds reflects Burrows’ activities as an artist and his involvement in squatting, as well as his personal life. The fonds includes photographs; essays and other writing; personal and professional correspondence; exhibition materials including catalogues, pamphlets, and invitations; clippings; newsletters; sketches; design plans; and other various ephemera related to his life and work.

History / Biography

Tom Burrows is an artist, known primarily for his sculptural work in the medium of cast pigmented polymer resin. Burrows was born in Galt, Ontario in 1940 and moved to Vancouver in 1960 to begin pre-medical studies at the University of British Columbia. He quickly left the program, but returned to UBC in 1964 to gain a bachelor’s degree in Art History. At the time of his graduation in 1967, Burrows’ work focused on minimalist sculpture, and he went on to gain a post-graduate sculpture degree from St. Martin’s College in London, England in 1969.

While attending St. Martin’s, Burrows was exposed to the European Student Movement of 1968, leading to a life-long interest in counter-culture resistance, and upon his return to Vancouver in 1970, Burrows joined the Maplewood Mudflats’ squatter community, the focus point for counter-culture in the area. In 1971, civic authorities burned down the community’s settlements, and squatting became a focus of Burrows’ work as his career continued. Burrows was hired to coordinate materials related to squatting for the United Nations’ Habitat Forum event that occurred in Vancouver in 1976, and from this, he was hired by the UN to document squatter communities in Europe, Africa and Asia in 1977. The materials he gathered from this research were later used in his sculptural work, Skwat Doc, which was shown throughout Canada and Europe during the late 1970s and the 1980s. Burrows continued his involvement with the squatter community of Vancouver in 2002, taking part in the squat held at the abandoned Woodward’s department store building, which protested the lack of affordable housing for the homeless in the area.

For a brief period, Burrows abandoned minimalist sculpture and resin for new forms of sculpture in the 1980s, but he returned to resin in the 1990s. He has also experimented with painting, photography, and video art at various points throughout his career.

Burrows’ first exhibition was a juried show at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1965, and he has continued to have his work presented there, and at other galleries in Vancouver, throughout his career. His work has also been widely exhibited nationally, as well internationally in both group and solo exhibitions in locations including London, Italy, New Zealand, Paris, Argentina, Japan, and Germany. In 1995, Burrows entered a formal partnership with the Bau-Xi Gallery, resulting in yearly showings of his work in the gallery’s Vancouver and Toronto locations. In 2015, two major retrospective exhibitions of his work were mounted, including Tom Burrows, a survey of his work from 1965 to the present held at UBC’s Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and Echo, held at the Bau-Xi Gallery’s Vancouver location, in which he reflected on his first exhibition there in 1970, his period of absence, and his yearly showings starting from 1995 to the present.

In 1974, Burrows moved to Hornby Island and built his own combination home and art studio, which he continues to work in and maintain.
1994-1998

Vancouver Association for Noncommercial Culture fonds

81 cm of textual records and other material
The fonds consist of records generated by the Vancouver Association for Noncommercial Culture in the process of fulfilling their stated objectives. Includes office files, minutes, grant records, project files, visual and multimedia records, and publications.

History / Biography

The Vancouver Association for Noncommercial culture formed out of the (N)oncommercial Gallery in 1986. It explored ideas of art, space, and community in a number of unique public art projects until its dissolution in 1998.

In 1984, (N)oncommercial Gallery was opened as an independent artist-run space. It was funded by the directors and through private donations and staffed by volunteers. The mandate was to maintain a serious level of dialogue within the arts discipline while remaining attentive to the needs of the community. In the spring of 1986, the gallery closed and the founding artists, in conjunction with eight others involved in the gallery officially formed the non-profit society, The Vancouver Association for Noncommercial Culture. The association was funded by private sector businesses through donations in kind and special accommodation of exhibits; the City of Vancouver through donation of space, and in 1992 from a City of Vancouver Cultural Grant; Canada Council Exhibition Assistance Program grants; and the financial and labour contributions of the directors and the association’s members.

The collective’s members shared a commitment to nonhierarchical organizational structure, skill sharing, and to fostering a critical awareness of culture and the possibilities for social change. Rather than run a gallery in a fixed location and within a protected artistic milieu, the association worked on a series of projects aimed at opening up and/or reclaiming portions of the public sphere for commentary from its constituents. In this way, the association wanted to help reformulate the idea of public space, and whose interest it serves. In addition, they sought to explore what constitutes public audiences and their own positions as both culture workers and as members of those publics. To serve these interests, the association decided to focus on non-traditional forums for artistic activity.

Projects undertaken by the association to meet their goals include Objects of Labour in November 1986, an exhibition about work and the workplace. From 1986 through 1988, the collective operated the Window for Noncommerical Culture, a 24-hour lit viewing space in the urban core. The bus shelter project, AdVerse Practises was conceived as a way of further extending their mandate by using a private advertising venue in the public domain. Urban Subjects, which ran from September to October 1988, presented works installed in the commercial urban landscape lit and accessible 24 hours a day from the street. The Flyer Project in 1989 consisted of a newsprint tabloid in which 16 artists from Vancouver’s culturally diverse communities produced pages addressing the city’s shifting residential demographics, communities, and architectures. Other projects included Private Addresses in 1991, consisting of works produced by nine artists for outdoor residential locations, and Out of Place in 1992, in which works addressed the artists’ personal perspectives regarding issues of dislocation, migration, visibility, and community. In 1993 and 1994, the association worked on Benchmarks and Bench(re)marks which featured rotating works by the association’s artists on selected bus benches throughout the Lower Mainland.

The association decided not to apply for Canada Council funding beyond 1996 as members withdrew to pursue educational and other interests. The remaining members chose as their last projects (and with their remaining funds) to create a video documenting the history of the association. Begun in 1996, the video, entitled Non-Document, marked the end of the association, and was completed in 1998.
1967-1996 ; predominant 1967-1977

Victor Doray fonds

1.8 m of multiple media
The fonds consists of records of two multimedia projects created by Victor Doray, Turn Off Delight and Pic a Mix, and records from the Intermedia Society. Includes textual records, audio cassettes, audio reels, photographs (slides, prints and negatives), 8 mm film reels, and video cassettes.

History / Biography

Victor Edward Doray was born in Montreal on July 29, 1930. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Loyala College (now Concordia University) in 1953, and a Diploma in Art as Applied to Medicine form the University of Toronto in 1956. In addition, Doray also attended fine arts classes in Montreal, Banff, New York, Paris, and Vancouver, and undertook two Medical Art internships at the Hôpital Saint-Antoine in Paris (1956) and the University College Hospital in London, England (1957).

In 1957, Doray became the founding director of the Department of Biomedical Communications, at the University of British Columbia, the first department in British Columbia which combined the talents of medical artists, photographers, TV and AV personnel to serve the needs of the Health Sciences. In 1985, Doray left the UBC to become a full-time artist and media producer. Prior to 1985, Doray had engaged in these activities on a part-time basis.

In 1973 Doray was awarded the Canada Council Senior Arts Award for the production of the multi media program, Turn Off Delight. Other achievements include a number of exhibits and multimedia events dating from 1965 to the 2000s. He was also awarded a life time achievement award by the Association of Medical Illustrators. His work has been exhibited at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the Burnaby Art Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Western Front, and others.

Doray passed away on December 21, 2007.
1969-1979

Vincent Trasov collection

19 cm of graphic material and textual records
The collection consists of drawings, paintings, photographs, newspaper clippings, and other material relating to Vincent Trasov, the majority of which document Trasov’s Mr. Peanut works and fire-based works.

History / Biography

Vincent Trasov was born in 1947 in Edmonton, Alberta and he is a painter as well as a video and performance artist. He attended the University of British Columbia where he majored in languages and humanities. In 1969, influenced by the work of Group Zero and Yves Klein, Trasov began working with conceptual art and focusing on process and materiality in a series of paintings that used fire as an element in performance and a means to create work.

In the same year, Trasov assumed the identity of Mr. Peanut, the anthropomorphized Planters peanut, after working on a drawing of the peanut and making a flipbook about the peanut that was later remade as a film. Trasov decided to run for mayor on the advice of sculptor John Mitchell and ran a full campaign, attending press conferences and other events in the iconic peanut suit. After his campaign, he retired his Mr. Peanut identity.

In 1969, Trasov, along with lifelong collaborator Michael Morris, also founded the Image Bank. The Image Bank took inspiration from Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School, established in 1962, a project in which Trasov and Morris participated. Like Ray Johnson’s school, it was focused on mail art and was proposed as a method for the personal exchange of ideas. It was intended to create a collaborative, process-based project in the hopes of engendering a shared creative consciousness. Image Bank commenced sending lists of participants and their image requests, published first in monthly Image Bank mailings and later in FILE Megazine—a reference and antidote to LIFE Magazine—as directories and request lists, and maintained files of artists’ correspondence and research.

Image Bank later evolved into a network of artists in-person and via mail who held meetings, set up clubs, produced a variety of artworks and publications. Image Bank retained documentation of all of these events as an artist’s archives to preserve the material accumulated from their activities. It was later renamed the Morris/Trasov Archive, partially at the threat of a lawsuit by a company that had copyrighted the name.

Trasov and Michael Morris began experimenting with colour gradients and the visual and material relationship between nature and culture, the fluidity of the boundaries between them and their reciprocal effects on each other, in the 1970s. This entailed painting strips of a given colour in nine stages of gradient from light to dark and setting them against natural and other environmental backdrops. The project later developed into the creation of rainbow coloured bars and variations created by combining different colour bars.

Trasov was one of the co-founders of the Western Front, one of the first artist-run centres in Canada, in 1973. The Western front focused on multidisciplinary art-making including painting, drawing, sculpture, video performance, music and literature and encouraged the subversion of the official art system. Trasov served as co-director until 1980.

In 1981, Trasov was an artist-in-residence at the Berliner Künstlerprogramm or Berlin Artist Program with the Deutschen Akademischen Austausch Dienst (DAAD) or German Academic Exchange Service. In 1990, he participated in the Banff artist-in-residence program. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Vancouver.

Collections

Permanent

1700s-2000s

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Collection

Search: https://belkin.pastperfectonline.com/

1938-1998

Jack Shadbolt: Works from the Collection

Search: http://shadbolt.belkin.ubc.ca/

Outdoor

2018

Esther Shalev-Gerz, The Shadow

History / Biography

REFERENCES

Funder

2015-2017

James Hart, 7idansuu, Reconciliation Pole: Honouring a Time Before, During and After Canada's Indian Residential Schools

History / Biography

Funder

2016

Marianne Nicolson, The Sun is Setting on the British Empire

History / Biography

Funder

1991/2007

Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds, Native Hosts

History / Biography

1948/2004

Ellen Neel, Victory Through Honour

History / Biography

Funder

2003

Rodney Graham, Millennial Time Machine

History / Biography

Funder

Partners

2002

Myfanwy MacLeod, Wood for the People

History / Biography

Funder

1966-67/1995

Robert Murray, Cumbria

History / Biography

Funder

1987

Glenn Lewis, Classical Toy Boat

History / Biography

Funder

1958/1977

Otto Fischer-Credo, Asiatic Head

History / Biography

Funder

1976

Jack Harman, Portrait Bust of Dr. Norman A. M. MacKenzie

History / Biography

Funder

1971

Robert Weghsteen, Untitled

History / Biography

Funder

1968

Gerhard Class, Tuning Fork

History / Biography

1968

George Norris, Untitled

History / Biography

Funder

1967

George Norris, Man about to Plant Alfalfa

History / Biography

Funder

1967

Zeljko Kujundzic, Thunderbirds

History / Biography

Funder

1965

Paul Deggan, Untitled

History / Biography

Funder

1961

Jack Harman, Transcendence

History / Biography