Heather & Ivan Morison

Heather Morison: 1973. Desborough, U.K

Ivan Morison: 1974. Istanbul, Turkey

 

Heather & Ivan Morison’s work challenges people to look squarely into the future and prepare themselves for what might be coming. It proposes a shift in thinking from the popular environmentalist view that we must preserve the status quo to the survivalist approach of preparing for an unstoppable and inevitable change.

 

The recent work of Heather & Ivan Morison explores the theme of the impending collision between modern life and the natural world combined with the reactions/solutions offered by people from survivalists to Buckminster Fuller. The resulting work is both beautiful and jarring: a tearoom housed in a morphed geodesic dome clad in felled wood from its surroundings at Tatton Park Biennial, I’m so sorry. Goodbye. (Escape Vehicle number 4) 2008; a jack-knifed semi-truck in Bristol spilling its cargo of 25,000 flowers, I lost her near Fantasy Island. Life has not been the same, 2006; an ex-military truck converted to a survivalist house-truck housing a library of apocalyptic literature for the 2008 Folkestone Sculpture Triennial, Tales of Space and Time, 2008 and most recently a barricade of urban detritus blocking a street in Wellington, New Zealand, Journée des barricades, 2008.

 

The Morisons were selected to represent Wales at the 2007 Venice Biennale of Art. They have recently had a solo show at Bloomberg Space, London and their work was included in Tatton Park Biennial, 2008 and the 2008 Folkestone Sculpture Triennial. The Morisons have forthcoming projects with the Barbican, London; Milton Keynes Gallery, Baltic, Gateshead and Firstsite, Colchester.

 

Danielle Arnaud contemporary art is pleased to be presenting a new work by Heather & Ivan Morison: a live puppet show from a script written especially for Volta entitled, I hate her. I hate her. in which the Morisons create a mythologised interpretation of their own work from the perspective of a bleak and ruined future.



Heather & Ivan Morison, I hate her. I hate her. Soil, straw, buttons, cloth and paint, 2008