Vancouver mail-art and abstract pioneer Michael Morris passes away at 80
Senior artist also cofounded the artist-run Western Front
Michael Morris’s The Problem of Nothing (detail), acrylic, 1966. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Michael Morris in a portrait for winning the 2011 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.
VISUAL ARTIST Michael Morris, celebrated for his abstract paintings and printmaking and for cofounding the Western Front, died November 18 at his home in Brentwood Bay. He was 80 years old.
A major force in building the Vancouver art scene of the 1960s, Morris worked across film, photography, video, installation, and performance. He is also being remembered for his constant enthusiasm, curiosity, and warmth.
Morris’s work is held in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art; the National Film Board of Canada; The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2005, Morris was awarded an Honourary Doctorate of Humanities by Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He is the recipient of the 2011 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts and the 2015 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts.
Scott Watson, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery’s former director, said in a post today: “Michael mentored many young artists and curators, including me. In 1987 I was suddenly out of work and Michael urged me to come to Berlin where he and Vincent were living post their DAAD residency. The ten months I spent there was a late coming of age as I learnt the German and European perspectives. Michael was attentive, generous, and wise, as well as being a great deal of fun. He had in the late 1960s transitioned from being a painter to being committed to a lived life as art. ‘I am a citizen of art. Art is my country.’ Michael did not conform to any consensus about what was cool or interesting. Whenever he saw a spark, he encouraged a flame.”
Morris is survived by his husband, Rahmi Ehmin.
The British-Canadian artist was known for his collaborative artistic practice and his ever-shifting roles between artist, curator, arts administrator, and cultural player.
In 1970, together with artist Vincent Trasov, Morris founded Image Bank, a conceptual vehicle for the mail-art movement. It featured collaborations with Eric Metcalfe, Gary Lee Nova, Ray Johnson, General Idea, and Robert Filliou. A boxed edition of 80 original artist postcards was printed to accompany the Image Bank Postcard Show, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the picture postcard. The exhibition, which travelled by mail, was then circulated across Canada by the National Gallery of Canada. (The Morris/Trasov Archive is currently housed at Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.)
Morris, along with eight colleagues from various disciplines, also founded and directed the Western Front Society, the East Side artist-run centre that presented burgeoning forms of performance and media arts. It was one of the first artist-run centres in Canada.
He had achieved international and critical acclaim at a young age. At four, his mother, an artist herself, moved him from London to Canada. At 14, Morris began studying under German painter and printmaker Herbert Siebner. At the University of Victoria and the Vancouver School of Art, now known as the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, he also trained under Jack Shadbolt, Roy Kiyooka, and Don Jarvis.
He completed his post-graduate studies at the Slade School of Fine Art at London University in England.
He was the acting curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1966, and from 1967 to 1970 he organized art events and exhibitions at the Simon Fraser University Art Gallery.
All the while, he pushed ever further into abstract art. Other experiments included inserting mirrored Plexiglas inserts into a painted canvas or exploring concrete poetry (the visual arrangement of words, letters, numbers, and other symbols).
The Audain Prize said of him: “Much like the institutions he founded, Michael Morris’ art was interested in dissolving conventions.”
Michael Morris: Back to the Problem of Nothing, 2012, installation view, Kardosh Projects at Marion Scott Gallery, Vancouver.
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