Heather & Ivan Morison are confused ...

Flowers with Fish 2004
photograph

 

10 September - 31 October  2004

 

Heather & Ivan Morison observe, collect and record the things they come into contact with, embracing chance encounters and seeking out subjects which are on the edge of daily life.  The everyday and the incidental, the unusual, the hidden and the unforeseen, all are considered without judgement and brought together in an attempt to provide insight, to investigate the things that surround us and to shed light on our place within these things. Stories interweave and new narratives emerge where once there were none, fictions and inventions surface where readings were perhaps once absent.  Interviews have been undertaken, objects collected and recordings made and by magnifying the peripheries and minutiae the artists attempt to begin a personal quest to develop an understanding of a larger scheme.

 

Their work is at once a celebration of and a reflection on simple pleasures and mirrors the passion, process and beauty of their subjects. Included in this exhibition is a new LP of conversations with an astronomer, an ice fisherman, dendrologist, gardener and a beekeeper. In 'Chinese Arboretum', a medium format slide series of one hundred Chinese trees, the artists demonstrate the compulsion of fanatics, travelling thousands of miles to record a single tree. 'Divine Vessel', their 70,000 word illustrated science fiction novel, is the outcome of the performative self-imposed isolation of a one month sea voyage from China to New Zealand and also to be exhibited is 'Akademgorodok', a novelette documenting the artists hiring an aeroplane to write the name of their favourite brand of Russian ice cream 'Inmarko' in the sky above the scientific township of Akademgorodok, Siberia.

 

The presentation at Danielle Arnaud contemporary art is part of a national tour of this new body of work.  This exhibition forms part of a larger sequence of presentations and events, which have occurred at other venues including Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, S1 Artspace in Sheffield, New Art Gallery Walsall, and IPS in Bourneville  As these unfold, so the complexity and multi-faceted nature of their investigations emerges, with each presentation adding detail to the previous and inviting the audience to undertake a similar experience to the original travels of Heather & Ivan Morison. Heather & Ivan Morison are confused is an exhibition of work not previously shown in the UK and is accompanied by a new catalogue published by Article Press.  The catalogue, which includes the novel Devine Vessel is available for purchase at www.parabolatrust.org

 

Installation View

 


Flowers with Fish (red detail) 
2004
Lambda print 96 x 96 cm

 


Two beautiful Java Sparrows in a cage on the back of a bicycle, Beijing
11' audio installation

 


Divine Vessel
images to accompany a 70,000 word science fiction novel written whilst travelling by freighter from Shanghai to Auckland

 


Chinese Arboretum
100 images for billboards of Chinese trees

 

 


Flowers with wood pigeons
  2004
Lambda print  80 x 80cm

 


Flowers with
duck eggs  2004
Lambda print  80 x 80cm

 


16 Spanjaard Straat  2004
Lambda prints  33.7 x 33.7cm