Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry, ed. Scott Watson and Jana Tyner. Vancouver: Belkin Art Gallery; London: Black Dog Publishing, 2015. 192 pp. $39.95.
This impressively produced survey of the early work of Vancouver painter, conceptual artist, performance artist, and concrete poet Michael Morris, together with a presentation of Canadian concrete poetry of the 1960s and 70s and its international context was “published to accompany the exhibition” Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry in 2012 at the University of British Columbia’s Belkin Art Gallery, but not published by the UK’s Black Dog Publishing until late in 2015. The Belkin appears to be the book’s co-publisher and Canadian distributor, although the book is copyrighted only to Black Dog.
This impressively produced survey of the early work of Vancouver painter, conceptual artist, performance artist, and concrete poet Michael Morris, together with a presentation of Canadian concrete poetry of the 1960s and 70s and its international context was “published to accompany the exhibition” Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry in 2012 at the University of British Columbia’s Belkin Art Gallery, but not published by the UK’s Black Dog Publishing until late in 2015. The Belkin appears to be the book’s co-publisher and Canadian distributor, although the book is copyrighted only to Black Dog.
Untitled concrete poem by Morris, 1967. Letters, 105. Many people in the literary community outside of Vancouver will know Michael Morris primarily as a mail artist, founder in 1969 of Image Bank, or as a performance artist, co-founder with Vincent Trasov in 1973 of The Western Front, one of Canada’s most important artist-run galleries. This collection’s numerous colour reproductions of his geometric and soft-edge paintings of 1966-69 and essays on their place in European and North American art history will enlarge that view, as will the reproductions of his concrete poetry of that period. Curiously, the latter was not widely circulated in Canada – not represented in bpNichol’s 1970 anthology The Cosmic Chef, nor often published in literary magazines. Morris seems to have produced them mostly as single copy drawings or as limited series prints, and presented them on gallery walls much like he did his paintings.
The three essays that accompany the reproductions of Morris’s paintings and sculpture – essays by David McWilliam, William Wood, and Scott Watson – map its development and place and locate it informatively within the context of the art then emerging in Europe and North America. They also relate it usefully to his creative and curatorial projects in mail art and concrete poetry. The two essays that accompany the concrete poetry – Jamie Hilder’s “Concrete Poetry: from The Procedural to the Performative,” and Michael Turner’s “Visual Poems: Imaginary Museums,” are
The three essays that accompany the reproductions of Morris’s paintings and sculpture – essays by David McWilliam, William Wood, and Scott Watson – map its development and place and locate it informatively within the context of the art then emerging in Europe and North America. They also relate it usefully to his creative and curatorial projects in mail art and concrete poetry. The two essays that accompany the concrete poetry – Jamie Hilder’s “Concrete Poetry: from The Procedural to the Performative,” and Michael Turner’s “Visual Poems: Imaginary Museums,” are
RSS Feed