Island Time showcases the work of the Scottish artist, Sophie Morrish. The exhibition is drawn from the decade 2007-17, to reflect the central themes of her diverse output during that period, when Morrish lived and worked on North Uist in the Outer Hebrides.
Morrish’s work of this decade is characterised by her imaginative interaction with the landscape of the remote coastline of North Uist. Acknowledging the realities of chance and synchronicity (‘meaningful coincidence’), her work emerges from prolonged acts of close attention to the events and objects of the natural world around her.
Walking, beachcombing, photography and collecting – feathers, carcasses, bones, pebbles, egg fragments, seaweeds, beached flotsam – are her principal means to an intense primary engagement with the dynamic actualities of life and death on the shore of the world.
Her re-working and arrangement of these media and materials in beautiful and meticulous drawings, paintings, photographic displays and spectacular arrays of natural objects are rich with ontological, taxonomical, political and aesthetic implications. Morrish turns our gaze back to the natural world and re-defines our deepest connection to it.
The exhibition combines photography, natural object arrays, drawings and sculptural works in a deeply coherent and constantly thought-provoking installation of discrete works.
Mel Gooding, July 2018
VIEW EXHIBITION IMAGES BELOW
Constellation, (After Fire), 2018 220 x 181.5 cm, Burnt animal bones board
Constellation (After Fire), 2018 Detail
11 days, 2015, Field Vole Skulls from Short-eared Owl pellets, plywood, acrylic paint, 23 x 23 cm
Interior of an art gallery with white walls, wooden floors, and abstract black and white artworks displayed on the walls.
Violent Beauty (i) 2017-2018 Feathers of predated birds, collected 2007-17, steel pins, graphite on canvas, 81 x 120cm
Violent Beauty (ii) 2017-2018
Violent Beauty (iii) 2017-2018
Violent Beauty (iv) 2017-2018
Violent Beauty (v) 2017-2018
As We Are Now (i), 2018 Digital pigment print, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag ultra smooth, 305gm, 60 x 60cm
Oceanic (i), 2015 Cetacean bones collected by the artist. Digital pigment print, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, 308gm, 24.5 x 48 cm
Sea-formed, 2017, 120 x Kelp holdfast casts, painted, dimensions variable
North Atlantic Drifter, 2015
‘The Making of ‘Biomass’ Time-lapse film by René Jansen, 2015 ‘Biomass (NU20072014)'
Photographic overview of ‘Biomass (NU20072014)’ Digital pigment, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, 308gm, 30.2 x 47 cm