Brian J Morrison & Emily Warner: Resist, Resist, Release.

About

Birmingham based artists, Brian J Morrison and Emily Warner, have been invited to create new work for the first floor space. Working in dialogue with contemporary art critic Jonathan P Watts, the progression of the invited artists’ ideas will be documented and the material presented for visitor interest and engagement on the ground floor.

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Resist, Resist, Release will be open on the first floor of The Shoe Factory, as part of DOMINO, 18th February-11th March, Thursday-Saturday, 12:00-18:00.

Resist, resist release is an exhibition of new works by Brian J Morrison and Emily Warner. The two artists worked collaboratively to produced a series of objects which inhabit the first floor of the old shoe factory, St Mary’s Works. Brian and Emily share a mutual interest in the role of the body as a site for artistic production and whilst their methods of disseminating these ideas are vastly different, there are some inherent crossovers.  It is at these crossover points where the work for Resist, resist, release come into being; taught latex, manipulated clay and spray paint are conflated to create a series of works with the aim to mimic the actions required to produce them.

Interested in the point at which preparation or rehearsal, becomes “complete” the artists consider much of the work produced to be in-flux, some awaiting activation and others seemingly in a state of recovery. This theme continues with a durational audio piece playing in the stairwell, an 8-hour recording of their working processes in the first floor space.

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Emily Warner is an artist and researcher working in a multi-disciplinary way to explore art as an on-going process, something that temporarily exists as a live experience, an action-based encounter or a conversational situation. Activating relationships with people and place, she is interested in the construction of relationships in both physical and digital contexts. Her work manifests as manipulated media footage and residual fragments from live performance. She is one half of artist-duo Hickey+Warner who commission public art-making via Make/Shift/Space – a roving artist structure. She is currently developing new work for FIERCE FWD; development programme associated with FIERCE– international cross art form performance festival.

emily-warner.com

Brian J Morrison’s work is informed by the physicality of the body in relation to the production and consumption of art, and considers how art objects might be capable of offering alternative relationships to the gendered body. Born in Belfast, he now lives and works in Birmingham. Solo exhibitions include Tension at The Birley, Preston in 2015, No Pain No Gain!!! at Supercollider, Blackpool in 2014, and Ripped Chiseled Rock Hard, as part of The Belfast Photography Festival in 2013. He is the MA Photography Course Leader at the University of Central Lancashire.

brianjmorrison.com 

Jonathan P. Watts is an art critic and editor based in London. Jonathan is a regular contributor to frieze magazine, and writes for Artforum and Art Monthly. He is co-contributor and editor of a magazine of new art writing called A-or-ist.

https://frieze.com/tags/jonathan-p-watts

Photographs: Nathan Clarke