Raymond Gervais

Raymond Gervais (1946 January06, 2018) was an avant-garde conceptual artist in Montreal, who was also a sound artist; a performance artist; and an author. He was as interested in the apparatus of music as much as music itself.

Early years Gervais was born in Montreal, Quebec, into a musical family and has written a memoir about his early influences. As a child, he was introduced to classical music, opera and Jazz along with hearing his mother playing the piano. In 1973, he co-founded the Atelier de musique expérimentale and in 1976, he began writing about music in Parachute magazine (founded 1975) In the same year, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Gervais did a performance titled Roche (Rock), since he used a rock to play the open keyboard of a piano. In 1977, he held a performance titled 3+1 at Galerie Gilles Gheerbrant in Montreal.

In 2001, the installation composed mainly of album covers (now in the collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec) was exhibited at Galerie René Blouin.

Selected public collections Gervais' work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, as well as the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), the national collection in France. In 2014, he won the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.