Al Neil

Considered one of Canada’s great interdisciplinary pioneers, Al Neil (Canadian, 1924–2017) was a writer, jazz musician, composer, performance and visual artist, with a focus on collage and assemblage making. He was a prominent figure in the Vancouver art scene and was particularly influential in the post-war literary, jazz and visual arts communities from the 1950s to the 1970s. He received music lessons as a child, and began creating artworks as a young man while stationed in Port Hardy, BC when working as a surveyor for the Department of Transportation. Neil later joined the army as a surveyor and saw action during the 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy. After he left the army and returned to Vancouver, Neil continued music lessons, with a strong interest in jazz, literature and the arts. In 1958, Neil, along with four others, opened the Cellar, a jazz club at Main Street and Broadway, with his group as the house band. His music from this period has been described as experimental, avant-garde and bebop. Dropping out of public performance for a few years, Neil re-emerged in the mid-sixties with a more experimental form of music-making incorporating Dada elements, and moving from jazz to sound-works integrating mixed tape and toy instruments among other elements. During this time, he joined the Vancouver artist collective Intermedia and collaborated with other artists on performance art pieces. In addition to his pivotal role as a jazz and avant-garde musician in Vancouver, from 1966 until 2014, when Neil was evicted by Port Metro Vancouver, he occupied a one-room cabin near Cates Park and the Tsleil-Waututh nation on the North Shore. The distinctive blue cabin, which was built in the 1930s by a Scandinavian labourer, was the last surviving remnant of a series of squatting communities in the area whose residents, at various times, included the writer Malcolm Lowry. For Al Neil and (since 1979) his partner Carole Itter, the Blue Cabin and the observations of Burrard Inlet it afforded, became the centre of a diverse art practice, including video and assemblage works. Neil has published books, magazine articles, poetry and short stories. In the 1970s he began exhibiting his artwork, with solo exhibitions at Western Front, the Vancouver Art Gallery and Atelier Gallery. His work is held in the collections of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Burnaby Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank. Neil received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (2003) and the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Awards (2014).