press comments |
|
|
In the run up to her exhibition at Hatton Gallery, Morris talks about her processes of applying and removing paint and the dynamic between planning and chance...
Interview with Anna McNay, Studio International 27.09.2024
https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/mali-morris-returning-video-interview-hatton-gallery-newcastle-upon-tyne
|
Exhibition 'Returning' (Installation view)
Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University 2024 |
| |
...Morris conceives of painting as an art of layering. Opacities and translucencies are overlaid and juxtaposed to create an image in which space moves through colour and colour through space. The result is a luminous clarity, even a kind of innocence, but one whose affirmation is simultaneously deconstructed, with formal relationships teased apart to reveal subtle contradictions and complexities...
Sue Hubbard reviewing 'Returning' at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, Doris Press 22.10.2024
https://www.doris.press/blog/16za291xy2yg8vtgcgyo4mx42s0bpo
|
|
|
How did you tackle it?
I tried various formats, realising they needed to work visually on three flags across, moving down the street in 11 bands. I eventually revisited a structure I'd used in a series of paintings called 'Ashbery'. They have a loose, dark lattice brushed directly over a patchwork of bright colour, two or three circular forms are then cleared when the dark paint is still wet, revealing random accents of yellows, reds, and blues. I hoped the lattice would read across the three flags as a graphic visual link and the bright circles would bounce around down the street, with a randomly varied order across the three flags keeping things lively...
Interview with Paul Carey Kent in Artlyst 22.07.2022
https://artlyst.com/features/mali-morris-interview-of-the-month-july-2022-paul-carey-kent/
|
| Banners in Bond Street 2022 |
| |
...Morris conceives of painting as an art of layering. Opacities and translucencies are overlaid and juxtaposed to create an image in which space moves through colour and colour through space. The result is a luminous clarity, even a kind of innocence, but one whose affirmation is simultaneously deconstructed, with formal relationships teased apart to reveal subtle contradictions and complexities...
Essay by Sam Cornish reprinted in Wall Street International
|
|
Wilbury Three 2017
120 x 150cm Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection |
| |
|
...This painting, although frontal in its composition, has the ability to draw the viewer back into the space. The choppy brush strokes within the bone-black rectangles draw the eye, as the gestures are relaxed but incisive... Different, unexpected happenings within each rectangle trigger an originality and uniqueness...
Laurence Noga reviewing Kaleidoscope at FOLD Gallery, London, August 2016 on
http://www.saturationpoint.org.uk/Kaleidoscope.html
|
Second Stradella 2016
198 x 214cm Acrylic on canvas |
| |
… In Mali Morris's abstract paintings, although there is clear enjoyment of the materiality of the paint, it's de-materialisation into colour and light is more important. And if the physical stuff of paint is transmuted into light, the artist's toil is transformed into play. The paintings are joyous, fun even, but in the same way that in dance, much effort is expended in making it look easy…
Andy Parkinson reviewing Nine Painters, Syson Gallery, Nottingham, May 2017, curated by Richard Davey |
|
Together 2011
70 x 80cm Acrylic on canvas |
|
Hear, Hear - Jerwood Visual Arts
Hear, Hear...a bursary of £10,000 and the opportunity to be mentored by artists and selectors, Marcus Harvey, Mali Morris and Fabian Peake.
Eleanor Nairne, Writer in Residence at Jerwood Foundation, 2013
http://blog.jerwoodvisualarts.org/?m=201303
|
Crossings (Small) 2014
25.5 x 31cm Acrylic on canvas |
| |
... And there is movement between the seven disks…. I become aware of my own process of attention-giving and how this very act brings one event momentarily to the fore while another recedes… After all, it is paint we are looking at here, and painting that is resolutely and magnificently abstract…
Andy Parkinson reviewing Mali Morris: Back To Front at Eagle Gallery, London, 2012
http://patternsthatconnext.wordpress.com/ |
 |
Seven/Mesh 2012
45 x 60cm Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection |
| |
|
… Mali Morris’ paintings, energised by their interplay of the planned and the spontaneous, both hide and reveal. First, she covers the canvas with a variety of bright colours; second, she covers those with darker strokes; third, she niftily sponges off small shapes – often dots, recently squares, too - from the top surface. Typically, she’ll go through that cycle several times before she’s satisfied with the push and pull between accumulating layers, and the exactness of the colour-chord discovered. Though far from didactic, I wonder if they might suggest that, while we all have hidden depths, we need to find a social way to display and harmonise them.
Paul Carey-Kent, review of Back to Front at Eagle Gallery, 2012, in the Saatchi Online Magazine
|
Dark Mesh 2012
35 x 44cm Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection |
| |
... there is a silent intensity, all the more mysterious as we realise that what we are experiencing is light more than colour and space as much as forms... she has achieved this economy slowly, through years of intelligent, observant work.
Norbert Lynton, Contemporary Visual Arts, Issue 15 |
 |
Breath 1997
171 x 197cm Acrylic on canvas |
| |
|
… I admired the shimmering transparency that Morris achieves in ‘Third Party’ (1979), now in a retrospective of her work since the 1970’s at Poussin Gallery.
Matthew Collings, Diary, Modern Painters, February 2006
|
Third Party 1979
208 x 139cm Acrylic on canvas
|
| |
… Mali Morris is an artist to cherish, whose relaxed and candid paintings have an atmosphere in which nuance and bluntness co-exist.
Tim Hilton, The Guardian |
 |
Black Diamond Encircled 1989
99 x 142cm Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection |
| |
|
... and (yes, OK, my favourite) Mali Morris’ brilliant abstract, Plural on Red.
Charles Darwent, reviewing John Moores,
Independent on Sunday 2002
|
Plural on Red 2002
40 x 51cm Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection |
| |
... there's a fantastic, edible abstract, Marron Glacé, by Mali Morris.
Charles Darwent reviewing RA Summer Exhibition,
Independent on Sunday, June 2008 |
 |
Marron Glacé 2008
30 x 40 cm Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
|
