Leopard Realty subseries

Subseries consists of postcards and photo albums containing images received through various correspondence networks and used in the research of Leopard Realty projects; photographs in various formats of Leopard Realty exhibitions and performances; and five Plexiglas-mounted works.

Subseries also includes advertising material for a silkscreen Leopard Realty print; Eugene Delacroix reproduction posters with leopard spot borders; copies of The Leopard "Hollywood" card featuring a photo of Eric Metcalfe naked and holding a gun; posters for Dr. and Lady Brute's Leopard Realty media presentation at the Art Gallery of Victoria; three wood-backed rubber stamps; and various leopard-themed paper ephemera materials.

Leopard Realty was a research venture headed by Metcalfe’s alter-ego, Dr. Brute, that began in 1970. For Metcalfe, leopard spots were a universal symbol representing power and banality. Metcalfe and Kate Craig collected leopard images received from the mail art networks they were involved with. These images formed archives that would be used for many exhibitions over the years. The leopard motif was a theme that reoccurred throughout Metcalfe’s works, including Leopard Realty Triangles, Dr. Brute and the Brute Saxes, Leopard Chair, Endangered Species, Leopard Alphabet, and The Attic Project.

The first work generated by Leopard Realty was Leopard Realty Triangles, 1971, inspired by Gary Lee-Nova and Image Bank’s Colour Bar Research. Following the awarding of a Canadian Federal Identity Program Art City grant in 1972, Metcalfe participated in a public art project with Lee-Nova and Dallas Sellman, in which slide-viewing kiosks were set up around Vancouver. For this project, Metcalfe created a series of postcards showing an increasingly leopardized Vancouver skyline.