Glenn Lewis (Canadian, b. 1935) is a contemporary conceptual artist based in Vancouver. Lewis became a central figure within Vancouver’s prolific avant-garde art scene of the late 1960s. Initially trained in ceramics, his practice expanded to include photography, sculpture, performance and video, and is often grounded in collaborative projects or approaches. Lewis’s work questions the dualities of the social and the natural, the conventional and the mythical, as well as the static and the transient, often ironically. In 1967, Lewis was prominent in Intermedia, a loose collective of artists, musicians, dancers, architects, engineers and educators who came together to explore new forms of artistic expression and equipment, influenced in part by the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, the back-to-the-land movement, performance and conceptual art. Lewis was first inspired to take up performance art himself after attending workshops with choreographers and dancers Deborah Hay and Steve Paxton at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1968, and the following year participating in a performance tour with his piece Canadian Pacific and Yvonne Rainer’s Rose Fractions. Lewis received a degree from the Vancouver School of Art in 1958 (now Emily Carr University) and later a teaching degree from the University of British Columbia. He went on to study ceramics under artist and potter Bernard Leach at St. Ives in Cornwall, England from 1961 to 1963. Upon returning to Vancouver, Lewis became involved in numerous artists’ collectives and artist-run centres, including Intermedia (1967) and the New Era Social Club (1968). In 1973, he co-founded the Western Front Society with Martin Bartlett, Mo van Nostrand, Kate Craig, Henry Greenhow, Eric Metcalfe, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov. As an educator, arts administrator and arts programmer, Lewis has curated numerous exhibitions and programs, including the Performance Art Program at the Western Front (1977-79), the Exhibition Program at the Western Front (1986-87) and the Western Front Historical Exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany (1983). Lewis has served on numerous boards and councils, including the Vancouver Art Gallery Board of Directors and the Western Front Board of Directors. His work has been exhibited extensively across Canada and abroad.

Melanie O’Brian is Associate Director/Curator at the Belkin, and has been the gallery’s Acting Director/Curator 2022 to the present. Prior to joining the Belkin, O’Brian was Director/Curator of Simon Fraser University Art Galleries, including Audain, Teck and SFU Gallery, from 2012 to 2020. She was formerly Curator/Head of Programs at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, Director/Curator at Artspeak in Vancouver and Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. O’Brian has taught at UBC, Emily Carr University and Simon Fraser University, and received her MA in Art History from the University of Chicago. She has organized exhibitions locally and internationally, edited numerous publications and written extensively for catalogues and magazines.