Michael Morris
Michael Morris was born in 1942 in Saltdean, England.
In 1946, he immigrated to Canada, settling on Vancouver Island.
Morris commenced two years of study at the Vancouver School of Art
in 1962 followed by a year at the Slade School at London University,
England.
In the late 1960's Morris worked as a Curator
at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Centre for Communications and
the Arts at Simon Fraser University. From 1973-1980, Morris was
instrumental in the foundation of the Western Front Society acting
both as Co-Founder and Co-Director during this period. The Western
Front was successful in presenting and producing new art activities
in the city of Vancouver and beyond.
Morris's earliest paintings were easel-sized gouaches
on paper. Initially, his abstractions were based upon landscapes,
but he soon became more conceptual in his work. He moved to a larger
format and began to work with acrylic on canvas. Often these paintings
respond to pop culture, the media, and cinema of the time.
With Vincent Trasov, Michael Morris developed
the concept of an Image Bank, which later became known as the Morris/Trasov
Archive. The items in this archive were collected internationally
throughout the late 1960's and 1970's and reflect in various media
the artists' situations, the sentiments of the art world, and life
in general during that time period. This archive is now held by
the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at the University of British
Columbia and has been exhibited in parts throughout the 1990's and
to the present day.
His work is housed in several major museum collections
such as the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Montreal
Museum of Fine Arts, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the
Ludwig Museum, Cologne. Michael Morris spent the 1980's working
out of Berlin, but returned to Canada in the 1990's. Morris' extensive
and global exhibition record spans his entire career. Presently,
Morris lives in Victoria.
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