Hank Bull

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Hank Bull (born 1949) is a Canadian artist and illusionist. He was an early member of the Western Front Society and a founding director of the Pacific Association of Artist-run Centres.

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Life and work

Hank Bull was born in Calgary, Alberta. His father was an Anglican minister and his mother was a weaver. [ citation needed ]He was raised in Ontario and Nova Scotia with three brothers. By the age of 14, he began pursuing art. He spent most of 1968 in Europe, visiting art museums, experiencing the student movement, and exploring the music scene. Upon returning to Toronto, he enrolled in the New School of Art, studying under Nobuo Kubota and Robert Markle. [1] He also played in bands and held jobs such as working for the railroad, picking tobacco, and bartending. In 1973, Bull moved to Vancouver, where he joined the Western Front Society. [2]

While in Vancouver, Bull met Kate Craig, [3] Eric Metcalfe, Glenn Lewis, Martin Bartlett, and Patrick Ready, who later became his collaborators. Bull and Craig became partners in life and art and were married until her death in 2002. Bull and Ready formed the artistic duo HP, producing radio shows, shadow theatre, and other projects.

Bull was an early member of the Western Front Society and a founding director of the Pacific Association of Artist-run Centres. In 1998, he co-founded Centre A, the Vancouver International Centre of Contemporary Asian Art. [4] One of Bull's formative experiences was working with artists who visited the Western Front, including Al Neil, Margaret Dragu, General Idea, Marshalore, Clive Robertson, and Robert Filliou. Anthony Braxton, Leo Smith, Steve Lacy, and Mal Waldron were among the musicians whose concerts at the Front influenced him.

In 1980, Bull and Craig travelled around the world, meeting artists and performing in Japan, Indonesia, India, Cameroon, France, Austria, and Croatia (Yugoslavia). They established relationships with video artist Ko Nakajima (Tokyo), dalang I Wayan Wija (Sukawati, Bali), musician Mama Ohandja (Yaounde), visual artists Sanja Iveković, Dalibor Martinis (Zagreb), Heidi Grundmann and Robert Adrian (Vienna).

After his experience with the globalization of culture, Bull devoted his work during the 1980s and 1990s to building networks between artists internationally, across Canada, and in Vancouver. He played an active role in developing ANNPAC (the Association of National Non-Profit Artist-run Centres) and was a co-founder of PAARC (the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres).

Throughout the 80s and 90s, Bull contributed to an informal collective of artists around the world who were experimenting with telecommunications technology, in particular slow scan video, transmission of text, and fax. [5] He continued his collaborations with artists and worked with Mona Hatoum, Emmett Williams, Gábor and Verushka Bódy, Antoni Muntadas, Tari Ito, Santiago Bose, Heri Dono, Tetsuo Kogawa and William S. Burroughs.

In the early 1990s, Bull became engaged in exploring the relationship between art and ecology. He co-developed the Furry Creek Art Centre, an artist-in-residence initiative created in collaboration with Japanese artist Kei Tsuji. During the same period, he participated in a series of conferences organized by Littoral in Lancashire, United Kingdom, which facilitated collaborations between artists and members of agricultural communities, including sheep farmers.

In 1998, Bull co-organized the Jiangnan Project with Zheng Shengtian, a multi-venue initiative in Vancouver featuring a series of exhibitions focused on modern and contemporary art from the Shanghai region of China. The Jiangnan Project played a foundational role in the establishment of Centre A, the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. [6] As director of Centre A until 2010, Bull worked with curators Steven Tong, Sadira Rodrigues, Alice Ming Wai Jim, and Makiko Hara to produce over 100 exhibition projects by Canadian and international artists.

In 2015, a survey exhibition, "Hank Bull: Connexion" was organized by the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown and curated by Joni Low and Pan Wendt. Based on Bull's personal art collection and his archive of props, costumes, videos, books, and correspondence, the exhibition travelled to five public galleries across Canada. [7] [8] [9]

In 2017, Bull was featured as one of six artists in an event co-presented by SFU Public Square and the Vancouver Art Gallery, highlighting artists shaping the Canada-China cultural relationship. The event included performances and discussions with artists such as Mark Rowswell (Dashan), Chan Hon Goh, Wen Wei Wang, Zheng Shengtian, and Howie Tsui. The program, moderated by Jan Walls, explored how art and culture foster human connection, empathy, and cross-cultural understanding. [10]

In 2017 and 2019, Bull held solo exhibitions of his recent work at Franc Gallery in Vancouver.

From 2014 to 2024 he was a Trustee of the Vancouver Art Gallery, where he chaired the Governance and Nominations Committee. [11]

Hank Bull is married to Carey Schaefer, who is also an artist.

Exhibitions

Bull's work has been included in multiple exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1986), Documenta (1987) Ars Electronica (1989), [12] [7] and the Leipzig Medien Biennale (1994).

Collections

Bull's work is included in private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, [13] the Museum of Modern Art in New York, [14] the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, le Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Burnaby Art Gallery, and the Video Data Bank in Chicago. [15]

Publications

Connexion, 159 pages, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown, 2015.

Awards

In 2014, Bull received an honorary doctorate from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. [16]

See also

Storm Bay (British Columbia)

References

  1. "Hank Bull – Video Data Bank". www.vdb.org.
  2. "CCCA Artist Profile for Hank Bull". The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art. Archived from the original on 11 August 2015. Retrieved 27 May 2016.
  3. Hawkins, Sandra M. "Delicate boundaries" (PDF). Canadian Medical Association Journal. Canadian medical Association. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  4. "Belkin Gallery". UBC. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  5. "El radioarte: Entre lo posible y lo imaginario". telos.fundaciontelefonica.com. Archived from the original on 29 July 2017. Retrieved 8 January 2020.
  6. "About Centre A". Centre A. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  7. 1 2 "The Galerie de l'UQAM celebrates an important figure of visual arts in Canada with the exhibition "Hank Bull: Connexion"". UQAM. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  8. "Hank Bull: Connexion is a vivid flashback to the collaborative, counterculture 1970s". Georgia Straight Vancouver's News & Entertainment Weekly. 31 January 2017. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
  9. Michalczuk, Olivia (2 November 2016). "Hank Bull's Connexion connects the dots". The Manitoban. Archived from the original on 25 March 2025. Retrieved 19 August 2025.
  10. "Culture / Diplomacy: A Celebration of Artists Shaping Canada's Relationship with China". www.sfu.ca. Retrieved 22 June 2025.
  11. Fumano, Dan (2 November 2016). "Vancouver Art Gallery parts ways with CEO and executive director Anthony Kiendl". Vancouver Sun. Archived from the original on 23 July 2025. Retrieved 19 August 2025.
  12. "Hank Bull, First Responder at CACV AGM". Community Arts Council of Vancouver. 7 November 2010. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  13. "Collections: Hank Bull 1949 -". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  14. "Eric Metcalfe, Hank Bull. Sax Island. 1984 – MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art.
  15. "Hank Bull". Video Data Bank. Retrieved 28 May 2016.
  16. "Emily Carr confers 2014 Honorary Doctorate upon Hank Bull". www.ecuad.ca. Emily Carr University of Art and Design. 19 June 2015. Retrieved 27 May 2016.