In celebration of his receiving the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, Kardosh Projects and Marion Scott Gallery are pleased to announce a focused presentation of work by Vancouver artist Michael Morris. Opening April 11 and continuing through April 25, Michael Morris includes classic multiples on acetate from the 1960s, recent gouaches, and new works on canvas and plexiglas. 

“We are thrilled that Michael Morris is receiving this prestigious award for his multifaceted contributions to the visual arts,” said Robert Kardosh. “Mr. Morris is a central figure in the artistic landscape of British Columbia and Canada. This award acknowledges the importance of his artistic work regionally, nationally and internationally.”

Included in the exhibition are a series of rare serigraph images on acetate produced in the late 1960s. Originally created for a travelling exhibition sponsored by the National Gallery of Canada and described by the artist as objects without a ground, these colourful abstract works use the illusion of the third dimension to address the concept of the façade. Also featured are several works from City Deluxe, Morris’s recent series of monochromatic etchings based on drawings from the late 1960s and reflective of his early engagement with Concrete Poetry.

A key figure of the west coast art scene since the 1960s, Michael Morris is one of Canada’s most recognized artists. Educated in Vancouver and London, England, Morris first came to prominence in the 1960s as a leading member of Vancouver’s burgeoning avant-garde. Inspired in part by the ideals of Fluxus and Pop Art, he became associated with a generation of artists who consciously rejected the national lyrical landscape tradition that had dominated the region’s art making, opting instead to work in a fully international idiom. Morris is particularly well known for his series of Letter Paintings, monumental triptychs on canvas that feature vertical bands of graduated colour divided by concave sections of mirrors designed to make the paintings interactive with the viewing space.

Now based in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, Morris has continued to pursue his practice, including by revisiting and reinterpreting earlier bodies of work from an altered contemporary perspective. In 2011, he was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, and in 2012 his work was featured in Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry, a major exhibition presented by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia. Morris’s works are in prominent private and public collections, including those of the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada.