$1,000 for the winning entry. Every full-time undergraduate student at UBC is invited to participate in an essay contest that considers the relationship between painting and poetry. The 3rd Annual Essay Prize is occasioned by the exhibition Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry and related symposium Symposium: Concrete Poetry.The Belkin poses the questions, you provide the answers.
Part of the inspiration for Michael Morris’s Letter paintings was the 1965 exhibition during his London school days at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Between Poetry and Painting. For centuries many writers and philosophers have fallen on the side of poetry in the battle between painting and poetry for the title of most ‘noble’ of the arts. Yet with concrete poetry there is a slippage into the more explicit visual territory of painting. Why does concrete poetry need this incursion into visuality? Does it allow it to say something that it could not with words alone? On the other hand, what is the reciprocality with concrete poetry in Morris’s Letter paintings? Does concrete poetry allow the Letter paintings to say something that they could not otherwise? Is there something specific to the 1960s that encouraged this cross-fertilisation between language and the visual arts?
The Guidelines:
Essays must be no longer than 1,000 words in length and submitted to the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Submissions must be made with a separate page indicating: 1) full name, 2) student number, 3) email, 4) telephone.
Contestants must be full-time students registered in an undergraduate program at the University of British Columbia.
In his roles as a curator and primarily as an artist, Michael Morris has been a key figure of the west coast art scene since the 1960s and his contribution to the development of Vancouver as a contemporary art city has been immense. Morris was engaged with Concrete Poetry in the 1960s. The Concrete Poetry movement was perhaps the first global art movement, springing up in South and North America, Japan and Europe in the mid to late 1950s.
[more]In conjunction with Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry All are welcome. Admission is free. General seating. SCHEDULE 1:00 pm Introductions Shelly Rosenblum, Curator of Academic Programs, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Michael Turner, Author and Curator Vancouver 1:30 pm Stephen Scobie, Poet and Scholar Victoria, BC “Summer Elephants: Ian Hamilton Finlay and Concrete Poetry” 2:30 pm Lori Emerson, Department of English University of Colorado, Boulder “A Typewriter is a Poem. A Poem is Not a Typewriter” 3:30 pm Coffee break 4:00 pm Liz Kotz Department of the History of Art University of California, Riverside “the kind of grid a typewriter produces in a very machine-like way” 5:00 pm Postscript Donato Mancini, Department of English, UBC
[more]We are pleased to welcome the UBC Contemporary Players to the Belkin Art Gallery for a concert inspired by the exhibition Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry. Directed by UBC School of Music faculty Drs. Corey Hamm and Paolo Bortolussi, the UBC Contemporary Players ensemble includes graduate and undergraduate students focusing on music and performance of our time. Programs blend masterworks by internationally acclaimed composers with exciting world premieres of works written expressly for the ensemble by UBC composition majors. All are welcome. Admission is free. Emergence Including new pieces composed and performed by UBC’s student new music ensemble. Jocelyn Morlock Theft – Waterclocks Naithan Bosse Pendulum Alyssa Aska All Roads Lead to the Great Path Olivier Messiaen 4tet for the end of time Paul Lee Broken Mirror Suite Daniel Marshall Le Rêve de Moise
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