Michael Morris (artist)
Michael Morris D.F.A. (16 May 1942 – 18 November 2022) was a British-born Canadian visual artist, archivist, educator, and curator. Morris has also completed successful works in film, photography, video, installation, correspondence art, and performance. Life and career Morris was born in Saltdean, England on 16 May 1942. He came to Canada when he was four years old and grew up in Saanich, British Columbia. As a child, Morris was influenced by Herbert Siebner, who arrived in Victoria, BC from Berlin in 1953. Morris was also mentored by Maxwell Bates. Morris later studied at the University of Victoria and the Vancouver School of Art, where his teachers included Jack Shadbolt, Roy Kiyooka and Don Jarvis. After completing his graduate studies at the Slade School of Art, where one of his teachers was Harold Cohen, he returned to Vancouver, and became acting curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Centre for Communications and the Arts at Simon Fraser University. Morris, along with Vincent Trasov, founded the Image Bank in 1969, a system of postal correspondence between participating artists for the exchange of information and ideas. He co-founded the Western Front Society in 1973, and was its director for seven years.