Roy K. Kiyooka
Roy Kenzie Kiyooka RCA was a Canadian painter, poet, photographer, arts teacher. In 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the family moved to Opal, Alberta.
From 1946 to 1949, Kiyooka studied with at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art. In 1955, he studied at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende. From 1957 to 1959, Kiyooka took part in the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops of the University of Saskatchewan, where he worked with famed art American critic Clement Greenberg and abstract expressionist painter Barnett Newman.
In 1956, Kiyooka began teaching at the Regina College of Art. He moved to Vancouver in 1959, and began to shift his practice away from painting and towards photography and eventually filmmaking. In 1971-1972 he taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax; he documented his trip across the country to Halifax in the work Long Beach BC to Peggy’s Cove Nova Scotia, which formed part of his 1975 Transcanada Letters. From 1973 to 1991, he also taught at the Fine Arts Department of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Kiyooka used the ellipse form in the Art Gallery of Ontario's Barometer No. 2 (1964). In 1965, he represented Canada at the Eighth Sao Paulo Biennial. In 1969, he created the sculpture, Abu Ben Adam’s Vinyl Dream, for the Canadian pavilion at Expo ‘70 in Osaka, Japan. In 1975, the Vancouver Art Gallery organized a twenty-five-year retrospective of his work. That same year saw Kiyooka publish his Transcanada Letters, a book project which weaved together photography, his own letters and experimental writing to examine his experience of the nation as a second-generation Japanese-Canadian. In 1978, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. Kiyooka’s Pear Tree Pomes, illustrated by David Bolduc (Coach House Press, 1987), was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award.
While in Japan, he made the StoneDGloves: Alms for Soft Palms photographic series, shown at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. He also made 16 Cedar Laminated Sculpture series, shown alongside the Ottoman/Court Suite of silk-screen prints, at the Bau Xi Gallery in Vancouver in May 1971.
Creator Id: 770Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Beginning Year: 1926
Country of Birth: Canada
Province of Birth: Saskatchewan
Year of Birth: 1926
City: Vancouver
Country: Canada
Type of Creator: Artist, Writer
Ending Year: 1994
Gender: Male
Living Status: Deceased
Mediums: film, painting, photography, text-based
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Work by Roy K. Kiyooka
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