IVAN & Heather Morison are steadily gaining a
reputation for being ‘ecological’ artists, with interest in their work,
which often draws on nature and our interaction with it, dovetailing neatly
with international concern over global warming and climate crisis. Yet their
art is far more complex than a simple message of activism, and can often
feel elusive and confusing, drawing on themes that include science fiction,
travel, anthropology, and, of course, the great outdoors. What brings all
these ideas together is the couple themselves, who make regular appearances
in their work, most prominently within their ongoing postcard series, which
they use to send out small, poetic missives about their everyday lives.
The series began in 2001 and focused initially on Ivan’s allotment in
Edgbaston in Birmingham, from which he would send mail-outs on the garden’s
development: a report on the disappearance of his ‘1st prize-winning Elvis
scarecrow’, a list of the colours and birds seen in the garden over the
course of a year, or the more dramatic (in gardening terms, at least)
postcard stating, ‘Ivan is concerned by a powdery mildew that has appeared
on his Green Bush marrows’. The postcards then evolved as the couple began
travelling and working abroad, providing an abstract diary of their
experiences – for example, ‘Heather is dreadfully afraid. Ivan said she was
safe with him, but he is the reason she has ventured so far’, sent from
Transylvania – as well as recording the events and people they met and
observed.
The most recent card was sent from Venice, where the Morisons are
representing Wales at the Biennale, alongside Richard Deacon and Merlin
James. In addition to their postcards, they are exhibiting a large
sculptural piece and an installation using slide animation and sound. As
with much of their work, these developed organically from a narrative that
sparked their interest – in this case, an article Ivan read about an
American couple who built a house-truck from two trees they felled, before
travelling the country and selling organic lemonade from the vehicle. The
installation documents the Morisons’ visit to the US and some of the
modern-day American nomads they met. However, this is no simple travelogue,
for within the images appear crystalline forms that hover over the temporary
homes, inspired by quartz rocks that the artists found in Arizona, and
suggestive of a mysterious sci-fi presence in the desert landscape.
The sculptural work unites this interest in the nomadic lifestyle with the
couple’s fixed home in Coed Gwynant, Wales, where they are developing an
arboretum – a new, ambitious gardening project that has replaced the
Birmingham allotment as the backbone to their art. The arboretum is also fed
by their travels, with new species of trees added from around the world,
including Redwoods collected in the US. The Venice sculpture is one of two
identical works (the twin is in the arboretum), constructed from local trees
that blew down earlier this year. Designed as an echo of the wooden domes on
the house-truck that first inspired their visit to the US, they also
incorporate panels of multi-coloured glass in a nod towards the crystalline,
sci-fi motifs of their installation work.
As these works suggest, the Morisons’ art is born of enthusiasm and a desire
for exploration and discovery. These traits, which could in some senses be
seen as naïve, are not hidden within the finished artworks; rather, the
artists’ personal experiences are central to it, forming a narrative, never
clearly fiction or fact, that runs throughout. Like Victorian adventurers,
their work speaks of an innocent excitement about the minutiae of the world,
marred by neither cynicism nor world-weary attitudes. Instead, they project
the image of a grand, unpredictable adventure, one they seem eager for us to
join.
ELIZA WILLIAMS IS A WRITER BASED IN LONDON