Michael Morley
The Tripping Room
Appearing like paintings made while high on any number of illegal aids, Michael Morley’s abstract works reach straight into the well-established relationship drug use and hallucinatory visions have with the visual arts. Replicating on canvas the kind of optical visions of grand sixties cultural products such as those of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ or the fabric designs of Emilio Pucci, Morley’s canvases invite you in with their amateur-like homage to psychedelia and the sixties dreams of art and freedom. The two large diptychs Midnight Cowboy (2004) and The Lost Weekend (2004) measuring in excess of two metres across, offer hazy takes on a notion of split perspective that is physically enchanting. Rendered in companion to the hallucinatory experiences of the protagonist in the two films referenced in their titles, these paintings offer up a conversation between forms and times tangential to their own placement.
Morley is well known for his paintings of turntables, reliably rendered with the needle mid-song and accompanied by a corresponding song or album title. Previously Morley has stated that these paintings are concerned with the possible recognition the viewer may or may not have with the musical reference given within this series of works. And in the ways in which the silence of viewing these works fills with the associations of the songs titled in these paintings, the optical works offer a similar space for cultural recollection.
There is an easy and quiet triumph to these paintings, a celebration of what they know they are offering to us. These works tell stories of painting and drugs and popular culture in a way digestible and playful for all those involved, stoned or otherwise.
Louise Menzies
This text is an edited excerpt from Louise Menzies, 'Michael Morley', Enjoy Gallery Pdf Catalogue 2005, Wellington: Enjoy Public Art Gallery, 2005, pp.38-40. Reproduced with kind permission of Louise Menzies and Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington.
Michael Morley artist bio:
Born Napier, 1963
Lives and works in Dunedin
Bachelor of Arts, University of Otago
Currently completing a Masters of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, Christchurch
Selected solo exhibitions include: 'Deep Field', Penthouse and Pavement, Melbourne (2001); 'Untitled #2', Ackerman Ballroom, UCLA, Los Angeles (2002); 'Humiliation I.Q.', The Physics Room, Christchurch (2004); 'Is there no one...', Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington (2005).
Selected group exhibitions include: 'Waterworld', Scott Donovan Gallery, Sydney (2004); 'Art.Music', Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2001); 'The Karaokes', Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin and national tour (1998).
Image credits:
Michael Morley
Empire 2005
oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist
Midnight Cowboy 2004
oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist
The Lost Weekend 2004
oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist
There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You 2005
oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist