Michael Morris (artist)

Michael Morris D.F.A. (16 May 1942 – 18 November 2022) was a British-born Canadian visual artist, archivist, educator, and curator.[1][2] Morris has also completed successful works in film, photography, video, installation, correspondence art, and performance.[3]

Michael Morris
Born(1942-05-16)16 May 1942
Saltdean, England
Died18 November 2022(2022-11-18) (aged 80)
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
EducationUniversity of Victoria, BC; the Vancouver School of Art; Slade School of Art, England
AwardsMorris was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities by Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2005); the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2011); Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts (2015)

Life and career

Morris was born in Saltdean, England on 16 May 1942.[3] He came to Canada when he was four years old[1][3] and grew up in Saanich, British Columbia.[4] As a child, Morris was influenced by Herbert Siebner, who arrived in Victoria, BC from Berlin in 1953. Morris was also mentored by Maxwell Bates.[4] Morris later studied at the University of Victoria and the Vancouver School of Art,[3] where his teachers included Jack Shadbolt, Roy Kiyooka and Don Jarvis.[3] After completing his graduate studies at the Slade School of Art,[3] where one of his teachers was Harold Cohen, he returned to Vancouver, and became acting curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Centre for Communications and the Arts at Simon Fraser University.[1] Morris, along with Vincent Trasov, founded the Image Bank in 1969, a system of postal correspondence between participating artists for the exchange of information and ideas.[1] He co-founded the Western Front Society in 1973, and was its director for seven years.[5]

The geometric abstractions he painted he made at the beginning of the 1970s have a sense of parody, one critic feels.[6] He had absorbed an urban aesthetic from British Pop artists as well as the ideas of Marcel Duchamp during his training. Later, he looked to California for new materials, such as Plexiglas and mirrors.[6] In 1968, he exhibited his Letters series in Vancouver, each with a title of a different city.[6][5] However, his future art-making lay in other directions, such as Conceptual art. By 1970, many artists in Canada, Morris among them, were circulating mail art among themselves as a project linking artists and communities.[7] Morris' work with the Image Bank has been heralded as instrumental to the early history of networking and the utilization of social interaction as art.[8]

In 2021, his work was included in the exhibition Op Art in Vancouver in the Vancouver Art Gallery.[9]

Michael Morris died in Victoria, British Columbia on 18 November 2022, at the age of 80.[10]

Awards

Morris was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities by Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2005). He is the recipient of the 2011 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts[11] and the 2015 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts.

References
  1. Gallery, Belkin. "Michael Morris". www.vancouverartinthesixties.com. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
  2. "Michael Morris: Painting Poetry – Canadian Art". Canadian Art. Archived from the original on 17 October 2017. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
  3. "Meet the Artist". gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Archived from the original on 17 October 2017. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
  4. Amos, Robert. "Robert Amos: Postwar Berlin fused painter's unique style". Times Colonist. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
  5. "Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry is a juicy slice of Vancouver art-making in the 1960s". Georgia Straight Vancouver's News & Entertainment Weekly. 27 March 2012. Retrieved 18 October 2017.
  6. Nemiroff, Diana (2010). "Geometric Abstraction after 1950". The Visual Arts in Canada: the Twentieth Century. Foss, Brian, Paikowsky, Sandra, Whitelaw, Anne (eds.). Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press. p. 227 ff. ISBN 978-0-19-542125-5.
  7. Wark, Jayne (2010). "Conceptual Art in Canada". The Visual Arts in Canada: the Twentieth Century. Foss, Brian, Paikowsky, Sandra, Whitelaw, Anne (eds.). Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press. p. 337. ISBN 978-0-19-542125-5.
  8. Bloch, Mark. "A look at three Canadian artists known as the Image Bank: Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov and Gary Lee-Nova". Whitehot Magazine. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
  9. "Michael Morris". www.vanartgallery.bc.ca. Vancouver Art Gallery. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
  10. "Remembering Michael Morris (1942–2022)". Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. 21 November 2022. Retrieved 19 October 2023.
  11. "Governor General`s Awards in Visual and Media Arts Archives". en.ggarts.ca. Governor General of Canada. Retrieved 18 August 2022.
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