Anne Morrison

b. 1966, Scotland

Born in Scotland in 1966, Morrison currently resides in Australia. Having studied at the Glasgow School of Art, the Royal College of Art, and then the University of Tasmania, Morrison’s practice is one informed and enriched by travel, by exposure to foreign landscapes, ancient cultures, – the result is a sensitive and nuanced approach to painting – and the processes and metaphors that evoke the intimate connection between body and land.

Morrison challenges preconceptions of how we see, experience and know the world, allowing us the opportunity to navigate and explore that binding connection through her work.Anne Morrison’s recent works are intimate and delicate studies of skeletal branches, brittle fragments of fossilized coral, sea sponges, and seaweeds interwoven with wires, rope, and netting. The paintings on paper in contrast to works on linen and canvas are stripped back to reveal the bare bones, forms hovering, floating, exposed, isolated and studied like a droplet of water or a cell under a microscope. Woven together their complex patterns and architectures mimic the rhythms of natural forces, in constant material exchange. They evoke the transient and ephemeral beauty of our environment and the continual cycle of renewal and transformation. These more recent works continue to build on Morrison’s longstanding interest in the body and its sensorial relationship to the environment – a constant factor in Morrison’s practice over the course of the past 25 years. Early figurative work explored a more personal narrative related to vulnerability of the body. This forensic scrutiny of the body led to her to dissolve the boundaries between the inside and outside, collapsing micro and macro visual planes to create more ambiguous yet powerfully evocative landscapes.