HEATHER AND IVAN MORISON
SUPPORTING EXAMPLES OF WORKS FOR SLEEPERS AWAKE
ANNA, 2012
Bone ash, lime wood, river mud, chalk, concrete, wax, water, cast iron, helium, lights, speakers /
9x18x12m / The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield.
Anna is an allegorical piece of object theatre that
tells a brutal tale of love and loss set against the
approaching threat of ‘the ice’. The story is
presented through the objects in the gallery and
the voices of the three narrators. Anna considers
our understanding of the world through myth,
and how meaning comes to us through
storytelling. It draws on the inherent symbolism
of objects, their existing associations and their
potential for new meaning in different contexts.
EMPIRE OF DIRT, 2012
Cloth, bone, ash, mud, puppeteer / 30 minutes total duration
Performance commissioned by Radar, Loughborough University, for the event Object Theatre.
A puppet play for a single puppeteer sat atop an
umpire’s chair. The puppeteer, Owen Davies,
acts out a partly fictionalised account of his own
life, searching for what meaning can be taken
from the puppets’ allegorical tale. Owen worked
with a pair of bone ash and mud hand puppets
specially made for him for this performance. The
actors Tom Bevan and Victoria Gould developed
the voices for the puppets for this work and Tom
also voices the puppeteer’s own part.
WWW.MORISON.INFO / +44(0)7939076376 / [email protected]
SLEEPERS AWAKE, 2011
Fabric, helium, light rig / 12x12x12m / Sittingbourne, Kent
Commissioned by Artlands for Swale Borough Council.
To be shown by South London Gallery, November, 2012
As dusk falls the illuminated elliptical balloon
form of Sleepers Awake appears low in the
sky, far off in the estuary at the mouth of Milton
Creek. It shines bright in the night sky, a
strange visitor emitting an unworldly light,
sinking slowly below the skyline as dawn
breaks.
Each successive evening it rises still higher in
the sky and each day it moves closer along the
Creek. For miles around it is visible in the
wide-open skies of north Kent; a beacon for
what lies beneath. People return night after
night, ideas are germinated, a place
transformed.
CAVE, 2011
Cast concrete, cast iron / 3x8x4m / Campbell Park, Milton Keynes
Permanent commissioned by MK Gallery in collaboration with The Parks Trust
Fabricated on site by the artists’ team.
Responding to the built environment of the city,
the concrete sculpture nestles into the hillside of
a park. Cave is made up of three large slabs,
which appear to have fallen together to form a
rudimentary shelter. Inside Cave an iron stool
sits beside a blackened circular depression in
the concrete, and firewood is left stacked in the
back corner. A work that offers the notion of
shelter and warmth at the edge of the city.
WWW.MORISON.INFO / +44(0)7939076376 / [email protected]
BLACK PIG LODGE, 2011
Coal / 4x4.5x6.5m / The Southbank Centre, London.
Commissioned by Clare Cumberlidge for 60th anniversary of the festival of Britain at the
Southbank Centre
Fabricated inhouse by the artists’ team
Black Pig Lodge invites visitors to shelter within
a glistening chamber of polished coal sourced
from a working mine in the Neath Valley, Wales.
The outside of the structure resembles a rough
bunker-like structure based on the vernacular
style of the sami turf lodge, hand built,
abandoned. The inside is smooth, manufactured
and polished, a space for ceremony and living,
from a non-specific cultural place. Drawing on
the dark mythology of the cult of the television
series Twin Peaks, and global and English
folklore, Black Pig Lodge presents a relic from
an imagined future.
LITTLE SHINING MAN, 2011
Carbon fibre, 3D printed joint system, Cuben fibre / 3x5.5x4.5m / Jersey, Channel Islands
Documentary video length 3 minutes
Private commission
Little Shining Man is a sculpture that has the
potential for flight. The design of the structure is
based around the tetra kites of Alexander
Graham Bell, multiplied out into three colliding
cubes. A double wing module has been
duplicated and arranged into a tight cellular
structural arrangement that appears as a heavy,
un-flyable mass. The kite element flown in the
image is one section of an arrangement of three,
that come together to create the final piece of
sculpture that is taken down to be flown once a
year.
WWW.MORISON.INFO / +44(0)7939076376 / [email protected]
MR CLEVVER, 2010-11
Customised vehicles, fixtures, puppets, puppeteers / 3x2.5x12m / Tasmania, Australia
Commissioned by Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania (CAST), Hobart, Tasmania
Mr Clevver, a travelling sculptural artwork in the
form of a puppet company, toured the lesstravelled side roads of Tasmania. Word of mouth
signalled the company's arrival at rural
settlements. A troupe of puppeteers performed
puppet shows that blended factual recall with
fiction, merging information into a narrative that
built on the mythology of their own lives and also
the lives of people they encountered. Out of its
time, part medieval part futuristic, Mr Clevver is
an evolving work about the coming together of
different people in differing places.
PLAZA, 2010
Timber / 12x11x20m / Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite, West Georgia Street, Vancouver.
Commissioned by Vancouver Art Gallery
Fabricated by Great Western Scene Shop part of a broad community-based effort led by the artist
Plaza hovers between sculpture and
architecture.
Rising three stories high, the walls of the
pavilion lean outwards towards the street as if
they have been torqued in all directions by an
extraordinary force.
Plaza evokes a pivotal moment of architectural
and societal transformation and metaphorically
suggests that the mechanisms which underpin
the modern city are far more fragile than we
imagine. Its burnt surface and collapsing form
infer a cautionary tale for the future, as well as
an invocation to transform the modern city.
WWW.MORISON.INFO / +44(0)7939076376 / [email protected]
BLACK CLOUD, 2009
Timber / 7x13x20m / Victoria Park, Bristol, UK
Commissioned by Situations, Bristol and rebuilt at The Hepworth Wakefield
Fabricated on site by a community team led by the artists
The large-scale pavilion structure was erected
through a community barn-raising in Victoria
Park, Bristol. The structure acted as
performance venue that gathered around it a
growing temporary community and was open for
park users, local residents, groups and
organisations to carry out their own events for
free. The Black Cloud has been repositioned
and modified in response to the architectural
and industrial backdrop of The Hepworth
Wakefield.
KIND, WISE AND LOVING, 2008 / THE OPPOSITE OF ALL THOSE THINGS, 2008
Ripstop fabric, mylar, carbon fibre / 230 x 200 x 335cm and 263 x 330 x 440cm
Mythologies, Haunch of Venison, London, 2009
Commissioned by Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool
The starting point for these two large kite
sculptures was a visit the desert town of
Quartzsite in search of mineral samples of
uncanny natural geometry, finding forms that
looked like they had been machined to
perfection. These rocks informed the geometric
structure of the sculptures, but while the
sculptures retain the essence of the form of the
rocks, they are physically opposite: large,
lightweight structures, produced from man-made
materials and designed to fly. In flight the kites
become ominous, heavy-looking rocks,
meteorites held floating in the sky moments
before impact.
WWW.MORISON.INFO / +44(0)7939076376 / [email protected]
JOURNÉE DES BARRICADES, 2008
Various industrial and domestic items / 8x21x10m / Wellington, New Zealand
Commissioned by Litmus Research Initiative, Massey University for One Day Sculpture
Car wrecks, discarded furniture and other urban
detritus barricaded a central city street. The
temporary public artwork acts as a rupture in the
everyday comings and goings of the city. In its
barricade form, the sculpture might suggest
associations with the history of political actions
and social unrest, but as a collection of
discarded consumer products it may also bring
to mind questions about our environmental and
economic future. In stark contrast to the
sculpture's grandiosity is its temporality installed overnight between dusk and dawn, the
work was in situ for just 24 hours before
'disappearing' overnight.
HOW TO SURVIVE THE COMING BAD YEARS, 2008
Soil, straw, water, timber, lime and ceramic pipes / 11x5x5m / Attingham Park, Shropshire, UK
Commissioned by Meadow Arts for the exhibition Give Me Shelter
Fabricated onsite by the artists’ team
In an ancient woodland an immense cob
structure rose through the trees like an
oversized Dalek. Both alien and primeval, How
to Survive the Coming Bad Years was inspired
by traditional rookeries found throughout the
Middle East where in return for shelter, the birds
provide squab to eat and guano to fertilise the
land on which food is cultivated. Built using local
soil and clay, by hand, in the traditional manner.
WWW.MORISON.INFO / +44(0)7939076376 / [email protected]
I’M SO SORRY. GOODBYE, 2008
Timber, acrylic, stove, guardian, other media / 5x6x10m / Tatton Park, Cheshire
Commissioned for Tatton Park Biennial and rebuilt for Radical Nature at the Barbican, London
Fabricated on site by the artists’ team
I am so sorry. Goodbye comprises two
intersecting geodesic spheres, hand-built from
wood harvested from naturally fallen trees in
Tatton Park, and functions as shelter,
observatory and performance space, where
visitors are served hibiscus tea. The ‘escape
vehicle’ unifies two acts, of making and use, in a
way that can be read as a complex set of social
rituals.
WWW.MORISON.INFO / +44(0)7939076376 / [email protected]