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Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

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12 Dec – 11 Jan 2023

Belkin Outdoor Screen

Outdoor Screen: Remembering Michael Morris

  • Michael Morris

    Artist

    Michael Morris (1942-2022) was a painter, photographer, video and performance artist and curator. His work is often media based and collaborative, involved with developing networks and in the production and presentation of new art activity. In his roles as curator and, primarily, as an artist, Morris was a key figure of the West Coast art scene during the 1960s. Morris studied at the University of Victoria and then at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University), followed by graduate studies at Slade School of Fine Art at the University College London, during the 1960s. There he became interested in the work of Fluxus and the European avant-garde, which had a profound influence on his work and on the Vancouver experimental art scene in general. In 1969 he founded Image Bank with Vincent Trasov, a system of postal correspondence between participating artists for the exchange of information and ideas. The intention of 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. Morris was acting curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Centre for Communications and the Arts at Simon Fraser University and has had many guest curatorships at other institutions. In 1973, he co-founded the Western Front—one of Canada’s first artist-run centres—and served as co-director for seven years. In 1990 he and Trasov founded the Morris/Trasov Archive, housed at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, to research contemporary art. He has established a strong international reputation and worked for many years in Berlin. Morris has participated in artist-in-residence programs both in Canada at the Banff Centre (1990) and at Open Studio (2003) and internationally at Berlin Kustlerprogramm (1981-1998). Morris has had numerous solo and collaborative exhibitions nationally and internationally, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2015 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts, the 2011 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and an Honorary Doctorate in 2005 by Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

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“I am a citizen of art. Art is my country.” On 18 November 2022, we lost artist Michael Morris – painter, curator, photographer, performance artist – who has been a constant and defining thread through the gallery’s history. Through 11 January 2023, we are showing a selection of Michael’s video works from the archive and collection that imagine the garden, the forest and the shore as sites of research as well as repose.

In 1970, Michael Morris co-founded Image Bank with Vincent Trasov and Gary Lee-Nova. Image Bank was conceived primarily as an art network through which artists could communicate and exchange ideas, images and information. One element of this collaboration is Colour Research, part of an ongoing pursuit of making and collecting an infinite, collaborative painting involving spectral colour bars that can be reconfigured by the unpredictable interplay between the artists and nature. For Dot Depth of Field, which is part of this larger project, Michael Morris, Warren Knechtel and Vincent Trasov collaboratively created slide and film documentation of an “animation” with coloured dots and coloured bars scattered at Spanish Banks in Vancouver. Like many of the works under the umbrella of Colour Research, Dot Depth of Field shows nature that has been manicured to suit the recreational needs of urban citizens. The artificially coloured dots and bars are humorously embedded in such “nature.”

Image (above):  Michael Morris, slide from Colour Research, 1972-73. Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Morris/Trasov Archive

  • Michael Morris

    Artist

    Michael Morris (1942-2022) was a painter, photographer, video and performance artist and curator. His work is often media based and collaborative, involved with developing networks and in the production and presentation of new art activity. In his roles as curator and, primarily, as an artist, Morris was a key figure of the West Coast art scene during the 1960s. Morris studied at the University of Victoria and then at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University), followed by graduate studies at Slade School of Fine Art at the University College London, during the 1960s. There he became interested in the work of Fluxus and the European avant-garde, which had a profound influence on his work and on the Vancouver experimental art scene in general. In 1969 he founded Image Bank with Vincent Trasov, a system of postal correspondence between participating artists for the exchange of information and ideas. The intention of 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. Morris was acting curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Centre for Communications and the Arts at Simon Fraser University and has had many guest curatorships at other institutions. In 1973, he co-founded the Western Front—one of Canada’s first artist-run centres—and served as co-director for seven years. In 1990 he and Trasov founded the Morris/Trasov Archive, housed at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, to research contemporary art. He has established a strong international reputation and worked for many years in Berlin. Morris has participated in artist-in-residence programs both in Canada at the Banff Centre (1990) and at Open Studio (2003) and internationally at Berlin Kustlerprogramm (1981-1998). Morris has had numerous solo and collaborative exhibitions nationally and internationally, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2015 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts, the 2011 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and an Honorary Doctorate in 2005 by Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

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