| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Brian Dyson graduated from the Visual Communication program at Leeds College of Art (Leeds, UK) with a major in photography and related design. Upon his graduation in 1966, he worked briefly as an assistant photographer in a commercial photographic studio in London. He emigrated to Canada in 1968, where he quickly became one of Alberta’s leading conceptual artists. His work, which took the form of art objects, poetic homages, critical manifestations, and products of esoteric research, aimed to deprogram the mechanical responses of the mind and emotions toward the development of understanding or consciousness, and to promote art as a vehicle for social interaction. His work has been included in major exhibitions such as Not Just Another Print Exhibition, which toured Alberta between 1980-1981; Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980, a travelling exhibition that occupied multiple gallery spaces in Toronto, Halifax, Edmonton, Montreal, and Vancouver between 2010-2013; and Made in Calgary: the 1970s, the second instalment in a five-part survey of regional art, hosted by the Glenbow Museum in 2013 (Calgary) and curated by Ron Moppett, RCA.
In 1980, Dyson and University of Calgary Professor of Art Paul Woodrow co-founded Syntax, a non-profit support facility for groups in the alternative arts, the social services, and the inner city community of Hillhurst/Sunnyside in Calgary. Between 1980-1999, Syntax provided cultural programmes and support services that encouraged the demystification of media and promoted minority perspectives through their presentation in print and electronic media. Syntax additionally served as a vehicle for cultural action that addressed issues in areas of economics, politics, law, social ethics, and aesthetics. In the early 2000s, Dyson withdrew from his activist work to concentrate on his street photography, which has been published in One Eye Open, One Eye Closed: Photographs by Brian Dyson (Calgary, Bayeux Arts Inc., 2005). He now lives in Oliver, BC, where he tends two acres of orchard and ground crops.
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