#alicemorey

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04.06.2022, Eröffnung der Ausstellung ‘Alice Morey: Conditioning Demands‘ (04.06.-18.09.2022)

Alice Morey, Conditioning Demands, 2022 (Produktionsfoto)

Alice Moreys bevorzugte künstlerische Praxis ist das Experiment. In ihren Werken problematisiert sie, wie Materialien, Pflanzen und Mikroorganismen – schlicht das Nicht-Menschliche – warenförmig gemacht werden. Ihre Malereien und Installationen sind prozessuale Gegenversuche, die aus einer scheinbar symbiotischen und gewaltfreien Beziehung des Menschen mit seiner Umwelt erwachsen: Auf ihren Leinwänden lässt sie probiotische Bakterienkulturen auf Pigmente einwirken, Textilien lässt sie über Monate hinweg in einem Heilkräuter-Wasser-Gemisch einfärben, im Wald ausgesetzte Bilder überlässt sie den Einflüssen von Witterung und Umwelt. Unklar bleibt jedoch, ob diese Versuchsanordnungen die ausbeuterischen Beziehungen reproduzieren, die sie eigentlich bekämpfen möchten. Fragilität, Heilung und Aggression kennzeichnen diese relationalen und widersprüchlichen Koexistenzversuche, die Morey mit nicht-menschlichen Entitäten unternimmt.

‚Alice Morey: Conditioning Demands’, 4.6.-18.9.2022, MEWO Kunsthalle (Ausstellungsansicht), Foto: Sebastian Bühler

Für ihre erste institutionelle Einzelausstellung in der MEWO Kunsthalle hat Morey eine neue Werkgruppe geschaffen, die sich ihrem langjährigen Experimentieren mit Pigmenten und Joghurt-Bakterien widmet. Die Werke setzen sich mit grundlegenden Aspekten der Malerei auseinander. Malerische Mittel werden hier nicht steril fixiert, sondern in biologische Prozesse eingebunden ähnlich einem Lebenszyklus. Mehrere Malereien zeigen abstrakte Formen und Flächen, die sich aus dem Zusammenspiel von Pigmenten, Malhand und Mikroorganismen ergeben. Die Leinwand wird hier zum materiellen Begegnungsort heterogener Handlungsinstanzen. Kunsthistorisch bedeutende Pigmente, wie Lapislazuli und Malachit, hat die Künstlerin in eine bakterielle Lösung eingelegt. Durch die Bildung von Schimmelpilzen geraten die Pigmente in eine ständige Bewegung. Diese Veränderungen sind über die gesamte Ausstellungsdauer zu beobachten und die mundgeblasenen Glasgefäße werden zur Bühne dieser Prozesse. Die Installation wirkt wie ein futuristisches Labor, in dem sich die malerischen Mittel emanzipieren und sich dem Zugriff einer auf Konsum ausgerichteten und durch Ausbeutung geprägten Produktionsweise entziehen.

Alice Morey, Test One (Malachite), 2022, Foto: Sebastian Bühler

Alice Morey (geboren 1986 in London) lebt und arbeitet in Berlin und London. Sie hat Malerei an der University of Brighton und Bildende Kunst am Chelsea College of Arts studiert. Die Ausstellung bildet den dritten Teil des von Lorenzo Graf kuratierten Ausstellungsprojekts One Thing Left to Try.

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Alice Margaret Morey pt. 2

Here the second part of our meeting with Alice where we delve more into her practice of painting and installations.

Mattia Solari: Which subjects do you explore with your paintings? What do you want to achieve with you art practice?

Alice Margaret Morey: I start from the subconscious. My work is a narrative and symbolic adaptation of the experiences I have with people and places.

So my paintings and installations collect around an understanding or feeling, that feeds my intuition to start with shapes, outlines, and patterns that are then filled with colour and mark making. My paintings often try to represent a period or character or place, that I can’t describe in words.

Each painting or object in my installations and work represent a specific character, place or idea that has informed my life. And so when I put together a show, I am selecting various narrative elements to create a wider, very personal discourse.

How do you know what you want to achieve in art? I guess that’s something that every artist struggles with. I would like to enjoy and record every moment, in some way.

M.S.: Your paintings have a colourful, if not joyous, although disquieting presence for their lack of forms and deformation, as you assert in your site a “a state of grace” and a “ lose of consciousness” at the same time, do you agree? Could you tell us more about this sensation?

A. M. M.: Well, that quote is taken from an extract in a book by David Batchelor called Chromophobia.

I did a solo show in 2013 called "Colour Abyss", which presented a body of work that I had intensively been working on for years. The title "Colour Abyss" was a description I invented to reflect a certain state of being whilst looking at the works. Again, each painting reflects a particular narrative. And grouped together they were showing the audience a common ground to define the paintings.

Its almost as if you are lost in a depth of colour… the painting lets your eyes follow from one corner to the next. The word abyss is seen as a void - I found it interesting to make a metaphor for entering something deep, an unexplainable depth of colour. And in that sense lose consciousness.

M.S.: Where does your inspiration for painting, collage and installation come from? Which artists do you look more often?

A. M. M.: First I fell in love with theatre and set design. It made my paintings adapt so much, and I found a depth in the marks and spatial awareness of my paintings.

This interest in sculpture, object and space continued - I have always constructed my own still-lifes, so there has consistently been a sculptural element in my process and thinking as a painter. I see installation as a way of painting, and vice-versa. I was constantly experimenting with ways of using paper and canvas that was beyond the traditional sense.

Now I think my practice is returning to paint and canvas, whilst finding ways to combine both elements in one, sculptural and pictorial.

I look at so many artists, that it’s hard to distill into a quick list. At the moment I have been looking at Danish and American painters.

I don’t want to dwell too long on obvious influences like Paul Klee. But there is one artist that its important to mention here - I have total admiration for Dieter Roth, his artist books and the experiments he made with so many unusual materials.

His diversity and absurdity as an artist has been revelatory.

M.S.: Where do you think your “chaotic journey” is leading you?

A. M. M.: I am not sure yet - but the reason why I call it a chaotic journey is to create a positive metaphor to describe the way I find balance in life, art, love, friends and family. I am searching for an equilibrium.

M.S.: How do you pick the objects you use to compose your installations? Do you see them as three-dimensional collage? What’s the principle behind them?

A. M. M.: The objects come to me through an encounter - the experience of meeting someone, visiting a new or familiar place, walking down a street.

I select them from a bigger collection depending on what outcome I want and for what show I have at that time. I do definitely see my work as a whole entity… one big 3D collage.

A painting doesn’t just need to be one canvas or frame on the wall, but the whole space around it, and all the objects surrounding it – and in fact the entire life that has gone into creating it.

When you enter one of my installations, you are in part of this wider painting, my whole collection of objects, and one section or theme of my life.

M.S.: And last but not least, could you name three things you have not yet done but hope to do soon?

A. M. M.: I am currently hoping to do a residency in the summer in Iceland.

I want to live in a farm in Japan.

I want to visit the Galapagos Islands, and I want to see the tectonic plates in action.

For more information check out her site, or visit her page on Tuuum!

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Some more pics of paintings, collage and installation by Tuuum artist Alice M. Morey, check her site or her Tuuumpage for more images!

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Alice Margaret Morey pt. 1

This week blog's feature is English, Berlin-based artist Alice Margaret Morey, she does paintings, installations and has a peculiar penchant for odd things, we could not help but interview her!

Mattia Solari: How is the Berlin artistic environment? How has it been moving here from London? 

Alice Margaret Morey: Berlin is diverse and accessible. It is open to any art practice you can imagine, and there is a constant experimentation with genre and materials.

I think that has a crucial role to play on my own work.  I have pursued many different avenues in the last six years. And have been consistently experimenting with ways of creating, displaying and cataloguing my work… whether through pop-up events, experimental exchanges, or interactive projects in abandoned buildings and locations.

It has been a resourceful yet challenging experience, especially effecting how I feel about my role as a painter. I was in search of something different from what I understood to be a traditional artist. To live and breathe my art naturally, as apposed to what I learnt or preconceptualised.

To reach out for the actual physical experience of making art. As an artist I record the environment around me. I wanted to actively seek these experiences, to get out of the world I grew up in. 

A change in culture, language, context, history – that could be recorded in my own way.

 M.S.: Are you currently reading or listening to something you would like to share to our readers?

A. M. M.: At the moment I am reading a historic novel by Daphne du Maurier called Frenchman’s Creek.  A romantic novel set in Cornwall in the 1600s.  It’s a poetic and nostalgic take on old English high society. And it’s also pretty funny.

I was also given recently the catalogue from the Hannah Hoch show in London, Whitechapel Gallery (see one of her collage below). I was unfortunately not able to attend the show, but she is a new influence in my work. She lived in Berlin, as an unrecognised female artist. Her collages made during the 1930s are a subtle statement about the political chaos in Germany at the time.

The novel Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki, and the Sigmar Polke show at Tate Modern, are also currently spinning around my mind.

  M.S.: What are you currently working on? 

A. M. M.: I am currently working on a painting series called “Laterna Magica”. This is a new approach I am taking to art practice. It consists of four large-scale paintings made on canvas with pigment paints.

The process I am using is different from my usual way of constructing work.  The title is significant here - Laterna Magica was an experimental non-verbal theatre in Prague.  The essence of Laterna Magica was a collaboration of film and theatre.

The director and stenographer used polyekran (parallel projection to more screens), synchronized individual theatrical and film elements. I wanted to adapt this ethos of image making into my painting. I wanted to create paintings that were ‘collaborations’ between different mediums. So I recreated layers and imagery from collages, photocopying them black and white, tracing patterns and marks over them on acetate, then projecting the image on an OHP over a large canvas. The end result doesn’t directly represent the projection per se, but is influenced by the impressions and layers of light falling on the surface.

I have also been experimenting with raw un-primed canvas, and pigment paints.  Dipping and soaking the canvas in water and pigment, then drying them flat. I am not sure the outcome yet but I am planning a big show in spring so by then the structure of these pieces will become clearer.

I want to make them into large-scale sculptures with resin. So in a sense these works will be more about the relationship between materials, and less directly narrative than most of my paintings.

M.S.: Do you see your Museum of Oddities as a modern Wunderkammer? What’s the strangest thing you've collected since? How do you exhibit this collection of things?

A. M. M.: Yes, to me this Museum of Oddities is my own Wunderkammer.

During the first years in Berlin I realised this structure or concept was the best way to house and archive my collection. For now the museum is exhibited in small parts, as I currently don't have a space large enough to display the whole.  

I have collected a huge amount of objects. But the most recent was a red squirrel, which I made into a taxidermy object. This was for an exhibition alongside the painting “Blue dining” for Berlin Art week.

His claws were cut off and he was leaning down, curled in a foetus position. I wanted to represent an innocence in the way he was placed on this plinth.

That's not all! Next week the second part of our interview with Alice, in the meantime you can check her site or her Tuuumpage!

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Here some pics Alice sent us, this is where she paints and draws!