The
paintings in Whole and Two Halves came to fruition after completing Yellow
Ochre Room, a 52 - metre long wall painting installation at Christchurch Art
Gallery in 2015, which remains on view until the end of April this year. The
making of these works also coincided with the artist moving his studio from
Lyall Bay, Wellington into town. The shift from one working space to another
went hand in hand with determining a starting point, reconciling materials at
hand and utilising them as integral to the development of new work. Simon
describes tliis process:
"These
paintings react to light. The reflective surface both reveals and conceals
colour and material. Daylight is synchronised with the viewer's movement. These
paintings are spatial. Like Yellow Ochre Room, there is a division of space in
the painting. In Christchurch the gallery was divided into 19 parts with the
yellow ochre colour reducing systematically from opaque saturated paint to
clear paint revealing the white wall surface. In A Whole and Two Halves,
through three simple applications space divides, and colour accumulates.
Gravity is an essential part of the process, dispersing pigment over time
creating edge and shape. The same system has been used in each work, however
shifts in format and colour resolution create experiential readings in time and
space".
Simon
Morris was born in Hamilton in 1963 and lives and works in Wellington as a
Senior Lecturer at the School of Art, Massey University Wellington. He
completed a BFA from Canterbury University in 1985, followed by a Masters
degree in Fine Arts from RMIT University, Melbourne in 1997. Simon Morris is an
Abstract painter. He has worked with geometric structures for over twenty-five
years exploring how line and colour operate in architectural space, and on the
canvas informs new aesthetic understandings of space and time. He takes a
reductive approach, making works in which a self-imposed set of limitations
interact with the particular ground of painting. Sometimes he makes object
based paintings such as the work in this exhibition, and at other times his
interest in abstraction is explored through site specific installation or
collaboration with other people. Wall drawing projects such as Contact: Artists
from Aotearoa New Zealand, at the Frankfurt Kunstverein in 2012, and more
recently Yellow Ochre Room in 2015, commissioned by Christchurch Art Gallery,
and Black Water Colour Wall Painting at 11am School of Art Gallery, with
accompanying catalogue text by Martin Patrick, expand the experience of a
painted work through an engagement with architectural and social space. In 2007
Morris was involved in two major collaborations with internationally renowned
Athfield Architects completing Rainscreen for The Dowse Art Museum, followed by
Light in Space, and Space in Light commissioned by Otago University.
Simon Morris was awarded the Fulbright Wallace Art Trust Award in 2016. This prestigious prize offers a three-month residency at Headlands just north of San Francisco in the Golden Gate National Recreation Reserve. Simon will be taking the residency up in July this year.
Buying Committee;
Blair
Kate
Gretchen
Blair
Kate
Gretchen
March 2017
