Dr. Carl Peters a visual arts and English instructor at UFV, is guest curator for the exhibit textual vishyuns: image in the work of bill bissett at The Reach gallery in Abbotsford.
“textual vishyuns: image and text in the work of bill bissett is not only a coup for Abbotsford but for all of Canada, because it is only the second major exhibition of bissett’s work and the first major retrospective of his work,” says Peters, guest curator of this exhibition and author of the first scholarly study of bill bissett. “Although internationally recognized as a pioneer of concrete, sound and performance poetry, there is little recognition of bill bissett’s work in the visual arts.”
Based on Peters’ book textual vishyuns: image and text in the work of bill bissett, the exhibition will comprise bissett’s total art: assemblages, collages, paintings, drawings and the illuminated book lunaria. bissett makes use of everything he comes in contact with, including the fragments, remainders and remnants of everyday items that are the source and inspiration for his work.
This first overview of bissett’s art since 1984 consists of works on loan from the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Contemporary Literature Collection (Special Collections) at Simon Fraser University and from various private collections, and is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Vancouver Foundation.
Born in Halifax in 1939 and living in Toronto and Vancouver, bill bissett is a unique figure in the history of Canadian literature and art. But he is a humanist first and foremost; a political thinker, a social activist and a great painter who continues to change and define Canadian art. He is the author of more than 80 books of poetry and the founder of blewointment press, which published the early work of many experimental poets, including Milton Acorn, Margaret Atwood, D. A. Levy and bpNichol (among others). Since 1967, bissett has published with Talonbooks in Vancouver, and in 2011 published his first (self-referentially titled) novel – a “novel” with “connekting pomes n essays.”
Related events
Thursdays, May 22 and June 5 at 7 pm I Free – Poetry and Cinema – screening and lecture with Dr. Carl Peters at The Reach Art Gallery Museum, Abbotsford
Thursday, May 29 @630pm I Free – George Bowering reading at The Reach Art Gallery Museum, Abbotsford
Saturday, June 21 @1pm I Free – Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Painting with guest curator Dr. Carl Peters at The Reach Art Gallery Museum, Abbotsford
The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, located at 32388 Veterans Way, Abbotsford, is the first ‘Class A’ public gallery and museum in the Fraser Valley.
For more information check thereach.ca or call 604-864-8087 or contact Carl Peters at Carl.Peters@ufv.ca
04/30/2014