Continuing Dialogues
Glenn Lewis, Keith Donovan, Michael Morris & Vincent Trasov
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Opening Friday, September 27th 6-8 pm
Book Launch Sunday, September 29th 2-4 pm Exhibition open from September 28th - October 26th Gallery hours during the exhibition: Thursday, Friday, Saturday 12- 5 pm Franc Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of the artists, Keith Donovan, Glenn Lewis, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov who share a long history and recently met in Berlin to celebrate the opening of the Image Bank Exhibition at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art this past summer. Morris and Trasov started The Image Bank in 1970 as a networking activity that exchanged ideas and information internationally. Community and connectivity were essential agencies of each artist’s early art practice. Lewis and Morris were members of Intermedia before founding the Western Front with Trasov and five other Vancouver artists to explore new frontiers of the visual arts. Donovan collaborated with the Front as an art student and later at Pumps, an experimental art space in Gastown from 1975 – 1980. In the eighties, Morris and Trasov moved to Berlin, Lewis moved to Ottawa and Donovan moved to France. They reconvened in Berlin as a group for the first time since those early years in June for the Kunst Werke Exhibition curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen and Scott Watson. Franc Gallery is delighted to present important recent works by all four artists and a unique collaboration by Lewis & Morris from the past. Keith Donovan was born in 1952 in Edmonton, Canada. He studied with Ian Wallace at the Vancouver School of Fine Arts. In 1982 following his time with the Western Front and Pumps, Donovan moved to Geneva following an invitation from the Museum of Art and History and when in 1996 the Fondation de France offered him a workshop, he settled in France. Since the early eighties, his work has been widely shown in both Europe and North America. Glenn Lewis was born in 1935 in Chemainus, BC. He was involved in a number of artists’ collectives and artist-run centres, which included Intermedia, the New Era Social Club and the Western Front as one of its founders. Lewis was awarded the prestigious Emily Award from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2000 and received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2017. His work is part of several private and public collections in Canada, USA, Japan, England, and France, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Michael Morris was born in 1942 in Saltdean, England and grew up in Saanich, British Columbia. He is the recipient of the 2011 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and the 2015 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. Morris studied at the University of Victoria and the Vancouver School of Art, and the Slade School of Art. After completing his graduate studies, he returned to British Columbia where he co-founded the Western Front Society in 1973. In 1981, Morris and Trasov were invited to Berlin through the DAAD, Berliner Kunstlerprogramm des DAAD. Morris and Trasov were able to consolidate their holdings from the Image Bank to create the Morris / Trasov Archive. The archive is now the property of the Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC. Vincent Trasov was born in 1947 in Edmonton. In 1969 he founded Image Bank with Michael Morris, a method for the personal exchange of information amongst artists. Trasov’s art practice includes painting, video and performance. Trasov moved to Germany with Morris in 1981 where he continues to live and create art today. He has had numerous international exhibitions and is represented in public and private collections in both Europe and North America. He presently resides in Germany and Vancouver.
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