bill bissett: Over 40 Years of Art

OPENING:

Over 40 Years of Art: bill bissett paintings 1963-2021

Opening reception: Wednesday, July 22 at 6-8 PM
rare live performance by bill bissett: 6:30 PM

Wil Aballe
1375 Railspur Alley
Vancouver, BC
V6H 3R7

On Wednesday, July 22 at 6:00 p.m., Wil Aballe opens Over 40 Years of Art: bill bissett paintings 1963-2021 with a rare live performance by bill bissett, queer literary icon who will be in attendance from Toronto for a 30-minute poetry reading and storytelling session.

An Order of Canada recipient and one of the most vital, brazen, and unapologetically queer voices in Canadian literary and artistic history, bissett is a foundational figure in both poetry and visual art. Now 86 and based in Toronto, he appears only rarely on the West Coast. For Vancouver audiences, this is an exceptional chance to experience him perform in the city that made him.

Spanning nearly six decades, Over 40 Years of Art brings together paintings made between 1963 and 2021 from the private collection of Frances Long, daughter of Joy Zemel Long – bissett’s close collaborator and co-founder of Th Mandan Ghetto gallery in 1968, as well as the private collection of Brian DeBeck and Karen Tallman, daughter of Warren Tallman, UBC literature professor and influential poetry figure in Vancouver. The exhibition includes six works from his landmark 1984 Vancouver Art Gallery solo exhibition, fires in th tempul, offering a rare view into the depth and continuity of his visual practice.

bissett’s queerness is central to his work and legacy. Described as one of the most experimental queer poets to emerge from the sexual revolution and counterculture of the 1960s, his writing is sensual, funny, erotic, insightful, and defiantly resistant to convention. From his earliest blewointment press publications onward, his work has challenged literary norms and refused the constraints of dominant culture.

That refusal became nationally visible during the 1977 Parliament controversy, when Conservative MPs attacked the Canada Council for supporting his allegedly obscene poetry, a backlash deeply entangled with homophobic anxieties about both his art and his life. The widespread defense of bissett by the queer arts community, alongside writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Margaret Atwood, remains a defining episode in Canadian cultural history.

His place in the queer canon is secure. bissett was featured at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival in 2011, where more than eighty people gathered to hear him read with a new generation of queer poets influenced by his work. He also appears in Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets alongside Robin Blaser, Brion Gysin, and Sky Gilbert. What is rare now is not his significance, but the opportunity to encounter him in person.

This exhibition is also an act of community care. Seventy percent of proceeds from artwork sales will go directly to bill bissett to assist with medical expenses, with the collectors generously waiving their share.

Preview available works here

On this occasion, the gallery will also publish a print edition of bissett’s vowl man, edition of 30, 11 x 15″.

Event Details:
Exhibition: Over 40 Years of Art: bill bissett paintings 1963-2021
Opening reception: Wednesday, July 22, 6:30 p.m.
Special performance: 30-minute live poetry reading and storytelling by bill bissett
Venue: Wil Aballe, 1375 Railspur Alley, Vancouver, BC V6H 3R7
Artist in attendance from Toronto