Main Gallery
January 9 - March 13, 2010

to show, to give, to make it be there
Expanded Literary Practices in Vancouver: 1954 - 1969

bill bissett, Tom Burrows, Judith Copithorne, Stan Douglas, Maxine Gadd, Gerry Gilbert, Ray Johnson, Roy Kiyooka, Gary Lee-Nova, Glenn Lewis, Malcolm Lowry, Michael Morris, Al Neil, Ian Wallace.

Taking its title from the opening editorial poem of bill bissett’s debut issue of blewointment magazine, this exhibition seeks to recognize an interdisciplinary literary activity that emerged in Vancouver in the 1950s, beginning with the collagist fiction of Malcolm Lowry, and proceeding through the 1960s in magazines, exhibitions, performances, and through the mails. The work in the exhibition, including bookworks, photography, music, paintings, sculptural assemblage, drawings and epistles, is contrasted with the “straight” literary modernism of the TISH newsletter and the “Georgia Straight Writing Supplement”. It is further contextualized by video screenings of Léonard Forest’s film In Search of Innocence (1963), which bissett addresses in his opening editorial, as well as Maurice Embra’s 1964 film portrait of bissett, Strange Grey Day This (1966).

This exhibition is curated by SFU’s 2009-2010 Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer-in-Residence, Michael Turner.

Opening Reception: Saturday January 9, 2–5 pm
Walking Tour with Michael Turner, 3pm.

Lunchtime talks on the exhibition with Bill Jeffries:
January 12 and 13 at 12:05 and January 14 at 12:35

The curator would like to thank all participating artists and writers. Also, Charo Neville, with whom Turner co-curated the Expanded Literary Practices section of the Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties website, as well as the site’s editors Glenn Alteen, Lorna Brown and Scott Watson; and Catriona Jeffries Gallery, the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Presentation House Gallery, Special Collections and Rare Books at SFU Library, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Elisha Burrows and Charo Neville, Judith Copithorne, Henning and Brigitte Freybe, Glenn Lewis, Ian Wallace and Scott Watson for their loans. Special thanks to SFU Gallery director Bill Jeffries for his patience, guidance and insight, and to gallery assistant Adriana Contreras, who designed this publication.

Michael Morris, The Problem of Nothing, 1966, acrylic on canvas.
Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery VAG 66.19 - Vancouver Centennial Award Purchase Prize. Photo: Robert Keziere.