Exhibition
ANNIE MORRIS: WHEN A HAPPY THING FALLS
6 Sep 2007 – 6 Oct 2007
Regular hours
- Thursday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Friday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Sunday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Tuesday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 10:00 – 18:00
Address
- 10 Conlan Street
- London
- W10 5AR
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Ladbroke Grove
Event map
About
For this show, Morris has created a series of paintings, sculptures and new tapestriesusing the common wooden clothes peg as raw material. In the tapestries (see Self
Portrait, 2007) pegs are collaged to the canvas with other found objects. Wall reliefs
consist entirely of row upon row of pegs, each inscribed with nude self portraits and
swathed with colour. In the sculptures, the pegs are arranged like the feathered coat
of a bird to convey impressions of strange avian creatures which lie dead or sleeping.
The ideas for the sculptures have evolved from collaboration with Burberry last year,
in which Morris played on the suggestive association of the clothes peg transforming
them into thick weaves of flowing fabric, billowing across the floor.
In her work, Morris uses the simplest tools with skill and craft to make striking and
conceptually challenging images. There is an obsessive quality to her earlier pen and
ink drawings - meticulously detailed landscapes of the mind made spontaneously on
postcards and hung together like a patchwork. In them she displays a debt to Paul
Klee and Louise Bourgeois. But the content is drawn from the joys and anxieties that
haunt her imagination.
In the same way, the compulsive repetition of the clothes peg also makes reference
to the Outsider artists. Ironically, Morris is very much an 'insider', having been
through formal training at art schools in Paris and London. This has enabled her to
adapt to a variety of different media: plaster paintings, ceramics and glass sculpture,
as well as found objects. What permeates the work is a lonely questioning spirit
which is both angst-ridden and life-affirming