Deadline: 30 July 2021
For the upcoming Fall issue of UNTIL Magazine, the theme will be ON DISABILITY with special Guest Editor Murray Siple.
Murray wants to know: Does your work give your lived experience context and provide analysis for the viewer? Is your disability a limitation in your art practice or does it provide a transformation into an even greater ability? Does having a disability push you to find content to express what others need to know about you?
The Victoria Arts Council is seeking submissions of literary works (poetry, prose, essays, and non-classifiable texts), visual art, moving image, and audio / musical arts to be included in UNTIL issue 10: On Disability.
Please email submissions to: arts@vicartscouncil.ca no later than Friday 30 July 5PM.
Send images as attachments NOT embedded in documents to be considered for this issue of UNTIL to be published in Fall 2021. With your submission please include:
- Bio (max 250 words)
- Artist statement as it might relate to the theme (max 500 words)
- Title, medium, and year of work
- Contact information
All contributors will receive an honorarium as well as one free annual membership to the VAC.
About the Guest Editor:
Murray Siple (b. 1970 Canada) begin drawing at age 2. All art materials inspired him in his youth, as did the analog technology of the ’70s and 80’s. He’d record conversations on cassette recorders, make pause VCR tapes off the TV and play them at parties, and take polaroids and display them in improvised gallery spaces in his hometown of Kamloops. He was accepted into Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 1990 and began to immediately experiment with mixing paint with technology (speakers behind paintings, projections into ice). A need for art school finances opened his skills with cameras to become a pioneer in producing, directing, filming, and editing snowboard and skateboard videos. His videos from the early ’90s went from covering local riders to travelling the world in a span of a few short years.
At the beginning of a bright career, a high-speed motor vehicle accident combined with an emergency room mistake left him a person with quadriplegia. In rehabilitation, Murray immediately began drawing again. His drawing led him to design a way to express how he needed things adapted for him, from ramps to bathrooms to clothing. He built an adapted house in North Vancouver that gained international press for combining modern design with barrier-free access. Living in that home led him to write and direct “Carts of Darkness,” a National Film Board of Canada production. He wrote and directed this film on homeless people who ride shopping carts downhill to collect bottles and is now one of Canada’s top documentaries.
During a break from filmmaking, he moved to Mexico and began painting murals which led to painting on expired election signs for canvasses. Murray now paints in his studio on Salt Spring Island and continues to paint themes that evoke fears of what may lurk behind the darkness. He admits no other medium has felt as satisfying as painting, where he can compose what he dreams, what scares him, and what threatens our planet.
(Above image courtesy of Murray Siple)