Michael Morris (courtesy University of Victoria)
Artist Michael Morris, a longtime fixture of the West Coast art scene, died Nov. 18 at his home in Brentwood Bay, B.C.
A painter, curator, photographer, videographer and performance artist, Morris was warm, enthusiastic and curious.
Scott Watson, the former director of the Helen and Morris Belkin Art Gallery at UBC, remembers Morris as a mentor to young artists and curators. When Watson was suddenly out of work in 1987, he says Morris urged him to come to Berlin, where he was living at the time. Watson ended up staying 10 months.
"Michael was attentive, generous and wise as well as being a great deal of fun," says Watson. "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 was born in Britain and immigrated to Canada with his mother in 1946, settling near Victoria. He studied at the University of Victoria and the Vancouver School of Art, followed by graduate studies at the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. He became interested in Fluxus and the European avant-garde, which influenced his work and, more generally, Vancouver's experimental art scene.
In 1969, Morris and Vincent Trasov founded Image Bank, a system of postal correspondence between artists. The goal was to create a collaborative, process-based project to counter the alienation of a capitalist society.
Morris served as acting curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery and had many guest curatorships at other institutions. In 1973, he co-founded Western Front, one of Canada's first artist-run centres. He served as co-director there for seven years.
In 1990, Morris and Trasov founded the Morris/Trasov Archive, now housed at the Belkin.
Morris participated in numerous artist-in-residence programs and had solo and collaborative exhibitions nationally and internationally. His awards include the 2015 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts and a 2011 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Source: Helen and Morris Belkin Art Gallery
