Untitled (If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?)

This artwork featured in Synthetic Landscapes (2017). A Meadow Arts commission, 2017.

Sculpture, scagliola

Inspired by the history and aesthetics of Weston Park, Heather and Ivan Morison have created a work that evokes feelings of opulence and excess, beauty and desire, all things that were at the heart of the Georgian aristocracy. Lolling in one of the pavilions of the ruined Pineapple House, the abstract form is traced in flowing pastels, lined with deeper crimsons and turquoises and flecked with patches of umber, zinc and cadmium.

Created using traditional pigments, the work also relates to tectonic forces whereby, deep within our planet, layers of matter collide, melt and mix, forming an unknowable landscape. This complexly patterned surface and the seductively smooth finish of the work is made using the old Italian craft of scagliola, a technique popular with the Georgians to create decorative marbles within their homes

Heather and Ivan Morison work collaboratively, not only as a couple but also with groups of supporters and the wider community; they believe strongly in the transformative power of art and its capacity to move and question all manner of certainties.

Image: Heather & Ivan Morrison, Untitled (If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?), installation view, Synthetic Landscapes, Weston Park and Shrewsbury Museum and Arts Gallery, 2017. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts.  

 

About the artist

Heather & Ivan Morison

Heather and Ivan Morison exhibited in The Long Afternoon of Earth, The Hive, 2018; Synthetic Landscapes, Weston Park, Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, 2017; and Give Me Shelter, Attingham Park, 2009, all commissioned by Meadow Arts.

Image: Heather & Ivan Morison, How to Survive in the Coming Bad Years. Clay, sand, straw, clay piping, wood, installation view, Give Me Shelter, Attingham Park, 2009. Image courtesy Meadow Arts.