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

Gordon Payne was born in 1933. He studied at Washington State College and the University of British Columbia. Payne began painting in the 1950s, and was associated with the Op Art movement in Vancouver during the 1960s. His work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as the Vancouver Art Gallery, the University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Robson Square Media Centre, M.C. Duthie Gallery, and the Burnaby Art Gallery. A long time resident of Hornby Island, Payne has continued his painting practice, making abstractions informed by a dynamic relation to the natural world. (2018)

Ian Wallace was born in Shoreham, England in 1943.  After completing his studies at the University of British Columbia and graduating with a Master’s Degree in Art History, he taught art history at UBC from 1967 to 1970 and at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design from 1972 to 1998. Wallace has been active in the creation, promotion and appreciation of innovative processes in contemporary art practice through writing, teaching and exhibiting his work.  Wallace has been an influential figure in the development of an internationally acknowledged photographic and conceptual art practice in Vancouver. Ian Wallace is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; Hauser & Wirth, London, New York and Zurich; Jessica Silverman, San Francisco; and Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels. In 2004 he was the recipient of the Governor General’s Award for the Visual Arts and in 2013 appointed Officer of the Order of Canada. (2018)

Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006). (2018)