Eric Metcalfe

Last updated
Eric Metcalfe
Born
Eric William Metcalfe

(1940-08-22) August 22, 1940 (age 83)
Vancouver, British Columbia
Occupation(s)Visual and performance artist
Known forDr. Brute
Notable workJazz and Gargoyle series
Website http://www.ericmetcalfe.ca/

Eric Metcalfe is a Canadian visual and performance artist. [1]

Contents

Early life

Eric Metcalfe was born in Vancouver, British Columbia [2] and grew up in Victoria, British Columbia. He travelled to Europe in 1960 and 1961, and on his return, worked as a truck driver for five years. [3] He then met Maxwell Bates in 1966 who encouraged him in his practise as an artist. [3] On a scholarship he entered the University of Victoria in 1967 and studied for three years with artists such as Dana Atchley and Peter Daglish, among others (1967-1971) graduating with his B.F.A. in 1971. [4]

Career

With artists such as Hank Bull, Michael Morris, and Vincent Trasov, he explored comic book-style drawings and Fluxus conceptual art. In the 1970's, Metcalfe and Kate Craig [5] [6] [7] to whom he was married (in 1969) [3] started performing under the persona Dr. Brute and Lady Brute. They went dressed in leopard print to art openings and played leopard print instruments [8] [9] [10] [11] with the Brute Sax Band. [12] They also collected examples of leopard print imagery from art, advertisements, magazines, and everyday life, and distributed them through a mail-art network. Metcalfe called their project to cover the world in leopard spots "Brutopia". [8] In 1973, Metcalfe was one of the eight original founders of the Western Front Society. [13] [6] [14]

In 2021, the University of Victoria held an exhibition titled Pop Anthropology of Eric Metcalfe’s oeuvre, spanning over sixty years, in celebration of the artist’s honorary doctorate (UVic DFA 2021, BFA 1970). It honoured his years as a student in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria in the early 1970s, as well as his lifetime achievements as a pioneer in performance art in western Canada and co-founder of the Western Front. [15] [16]

The Eric Metcalfe fonds is in the collection of the Morris and Helen Belkind Gallery, Vancouver. [17]

Awards

Collections

Metcalfe's work is collected in the following museums, among others:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Belmore</span> Canadian Anishinaabekwe artist (born 1960)

Rebecca Belmore is a Canadian interdisciplinary Anishinaabekwe artist who is notable for politically conscious and socially aware performance and installation work. She is Ojibwe and a member of Obishikokaang. Belmore currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Paul Wong is a Canadian artist and curator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marian Penner Bancroft</span> Canadian artist and photographer

Marian Penner Bancroft is a Canadian artist and photographer based in Vancouver. She is an associate professor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she has been teaching since 1981. She has previously also taught at Simon Fraser University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She is a member of the board of Artspeak Gallery and is represented in Vancouver by the Republic Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Audain</span> Canadian home builder (born 1937)

Michael James Audain, is a Canadian home builder, philanthropist and art collector. He is the Chairman and major shareholder of the privately held Polygon Homes Ltd., one of the largest multi-family builders in British Columbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Craig</span> Canadian video and performance artist

Kate Craig was a Canadian video and performance artist, costume designer, and photographer. She was a founding member of the artist-run centre the Western Front, in 1973, and the artists-in-residence program in 1977. She supported the video and performance works of many artists while producing her own body of work. She is known for her performances such as "Lady Brute," and for her video works.

Lorna Brown is a Canadian artist, curator and writer. Her work focuses on public space, social phenomena such as boredom, and institutional structures and systems.

Carole Itter is a Canadian artist, writer, performer and filmmaker.

Laiwan is a Zimbabwean interdisciplinary artist, art critic, gallerist, writer, curator and educator. Her wide-ranging practice is based in poetics and philosophy. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Ann Kipling L.L.D was a Canadian artist who created impressionistic portraits and landscapes in drawings and prints on paper from direct observation.

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun is a Cowichan/Syilx First Nations contemporary artist from Canada. His paintings employ elements of Northwest Coast formline design and Surrealism to explore issues as environmentalism, land ownership, and Canada's treatment of First Nations peoples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marianne Nicolson</span> Canadian artist (born 1969)

Marianne Nicolson is a Dzawada’enuxw visual artist whose work explores the margins at which public access to First Nations artifacts clashes with the preservation of indigenous cultural knowledge. She utilizes painting, photography, mixed-media, sculpture, and installation to create modern depictions of traditional Kwakwaka’wakw beliefs, and has exhibited in Canada and throughout the world since 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arabella Campbell</span> Canadian artist

Arabella Campbell is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia in 1996, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2002. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute from 1998 to 2000. She has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. She works out of a warehouse studio in False Creek Flats, Vancouver.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allyson Clay</span> Canadian artist

Allyson Clay is a Canadian visual artist, curator, and educator based in Vancouver, B.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabelle Pauwels</span>

Isabelle Pauwels is a Vancouver-based artist who works primarily in video-based art. Pauwels received a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and obtained an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. Pauwels' work explores narrative structures, forms of storytelling and how they shape moral and emotional experiences. The narrative in her work does not follow causality; instead it performs in a twisting loop that circles around itself.

The Audain Prize for the Visual Arts is an annual award that recognizes a distinguished Canadian artist. Worth $100,000, it is one of Canada's most significant honours for the arts. The prize is supported by the Audain Foundation and presented by the Audain Art Museum.

Michael Morris D.F.A. 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.

Tarah Hogue is a Canadian curator and writer known for her work with Indigenous art. Hogue is of Métis and settler ancestry and resides in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She is the inaugural Curator at Remai Modern.

Ron Tran is a visual artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Scott Watson is a Canadian curator, writer, and researcher based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Watson was the Director/Curator of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia from 1995 to 2021. As faculty in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia, he helped initiate the Critical Curatorial Studies program at UBC in September 2002. Through his research and publications, he has acted as a champion of contemporary Vancouver artists.

Doris Shadbolt, née Meisel LL. D. D.F.A. was an art historian, author, curator, cultural bureaucrat, educator and philanthropist who had an important impact on the development of Canadian art and culture.

References

  1. 1 2 Strother, Miguel. "Feature: Eric Metcalfe, Artist". The Torch. University of Victoria. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  2. ↑ "Artist/Maker Name "Metcalfe, Eric W."". Canadian Heritage Information Network. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, volumes 1-8 by Colin S. MacDonald, and volume 9 (online only), by Anne Newlands and Judith Parker National Gallery of Canada / Musée des beaux-arts du Canada
  4. ↑ Fraser, Dorian Jesse. "West Coast Modernism and the Pop Sauvage of Eric Metcalfe" (PDF). www.uvic.ca. UVic Legacy Art Gallery. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  5. ↑ Kate Craig; Grant Arnold; Nicole Gingras; Brice Canyon (1 January 1998). Kate Craig: Skin. Vancouver Art Gallery.
  6. 1 2 Géza Perneczky (1993). The magazine network: the trends of alternative art in the light of their periodicals 1968-1988. Soft Geometry.
  7. ↑ Jules Heller; Nancy G. Heller (19 December 2013). North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Taylor & Francis. pp. 1587–. ISBN   978-1-135-63889-4.
  8. 1 2 3 4 "2006 Audain Prize". audainprize.com. Audain Museum. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  9. ↑ "Eric Metcalfe: Dr. Brute and Friends On View at the National Gallery of Canada". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  10. ↑ Jayne Wark (2006). Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. pp. 134–. ISBN   978-0-7735-7671-1.
  11. ↑ Arts Canada. Society for Art Publications. 1978.
  12. ↑ Michael Crane; Mary Stofflet (1 January 1984). Correspondence Art: Source Book for the Network of International Postal Art Activity. Contemporary Arts Press. ISBN   978-0-931818-02-8.
  13. ↑ Joan Murray (1999). Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century. Dundurn. pp. 174–. ISBN   978-1-4597-2236-1.
  14. ↑ George E. Marcus (15 April 2000). Para-Sites: A Casebook Against Cynical Reason. University of Chicago Press. pp. 353–. ISBN   978-0-226-50437-7.
  15. ↑ "Events UVic". events.uvic.ca. U Victoria. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  16. ↑ Fraser, Dorian Jesse. "West Coast Modernism and the Pop Sauvage of Eric Metcalfe" (PDF). www.uvic.ca. Uvic. Retrieved 8 October 2023.
  17. ↑ "Eric Metcalfe fonds". belkin.ubc.ca. Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  18. ↑ "Prizes". Canada Council. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  19. ↑ "2008 Winners". Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 27 May 2016.
  20. ↑ "2021 Honorary Degree Recipients - University of Victoria". www.uvic.ca. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
  21. ↑ "Eric Metcalfe". aggv.ca. Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  22. ↑ "Eric Metcalfe". /collections.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca. Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  23. ↑ "Eric Metcalfe". collection.belkin.ubc.ca. Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  24. ↑ "Eric Metcalfe, Hank Bull. Sax Island. 1984 | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
  25. ↑ "Eric Metcalfe". www.gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  26. ↑ "U Vic Collection". collectionlegacy.uvic.ca. U Victoria. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  27. ↑ "Pictures and Promises". www.vanartgallery.bc.ca. Vancouver Art Gallery. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  28. ↑ "Eric Metcalfe". westvancouverartmuseum.ca. West Vancouver Art Museum. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.