Name/Title
Hot HouseEntry/Object ID
2018.04.01Description
Hank Bull (b. 1949) is an interdisciplinary artist from Calgary, Alberta. His father was a musician and an Anglican pastor, and his mother is an artist. Bull grew up moving around between Windsor, Hamilton, Cobourg, and Toronto. His three brothers are all active in music and the arts in one way or another.
Bull works in performance art, radio, shadow theatre, publishing, and curation. Bull’s artistic practice utilizes ephemera and targets unconventional spaces and modes of improvisations. This involves his extensive work in radio and television, which he considers a medium of art. These works have included a collaboration with Patrick Ready in their production of an original radio show, The HP Dinner Show, which ran for eight years on Vancouver Co-operative Radio. His recent project, Standing Forms, are a series of photographs and installation that explores the potential and transformation of cardboard boxes from practical object to art as a metaphor for reuse and renewal in the world at large.
Alongside his art practice, Bull is noted for his role as an arts organizer who produces networks and collaborations with artists nationally and internationally. He 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.
Bull currently lives and works in Vancouver. His work has been shown internationally, including at the Venice Biennale (1986) and Documenta (1987), and is held in the permanent collections of Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Bull was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2014.
https://www.hankbull.ca/