 8.9.1929 (detail), 2003 acrylic on canvas 51 x 61.5 cm Simon Morley Post Card "Dear Sid, Having a good time the weather is raining at the moment but we are enjoying ourselves. Joe". So writes Joe from Butlin's, Minehead, on the 18th September 1967, to his friend, brother, or could it even, perhaps be his lover, Sid Parker? In his new series of paintings Simon Morley explores the multiple layers of narrative evoked by postcards collected from bric-a-brac shops around England. Fragments of unknown relationships, they speak volumes about social discourse, class, and changing conventions, producing what is in sum an ad hoc history of Englishness in the twentieth century. Morley has made a series of enlarged hand-painted richly coloured facsilimiles of a number of postcards written and posted between the beginning of the twentieth century and the 1970s. Each painting is also a monochrome, with text painted only slightly darker than the ground. The result, as Morley suggests, is to "slow down or quieten the response to the work, rendering it a contemplative object while mixing the activities of seeing and reading". Morley's work as a whole has recently extended to include video, photography, and books published by his own Utopia Press. To complement the new series, Morley is publishing a limited edition collection of postcards carrying on their fronts the texts of 20 old postcards, including those from which he has made paintings. The edition is available from Percy Miller gallery. Simon Morley graduated in 1998 from the MA programme at Goldsmith's College, London. Recent solo exhibitions include "The Collected Works of George Orwell and other Paintings", Percy Miller gallery, London; "Italian Holiday", Zero, Piacenza, Italy; and "The Life of Things", 3º West Gallery @ Island View, The Wordsworth Trust. In 2004 he will have a solo exhibition with Taguchi Fine Art, Tokyo. During 2003 Simon Morley was the first artist-in-residence at The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere and in 2004 will be an Abbey Fellow in Painting at the British School in Rome. His catalogue for "The Unfortunate Tourist of Helvellyn and his Faithful Dog" has been shortlisted for The Art Newspaper / AXA Catalogue of the Year Award. Simon Morley's book "Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art" is published by Thames and Hudson from October. To coincide with its publication he is co-curating with Tanya Peixoto THE BOOK SHOW at the Nunnery Gallery, London from 10th October to 22nd November 2003. 15 October - 5 December 2003 Opening times: Wed-Frid 11am - 6pm, Sat 11am - 3pm or by appointment Percy Miller Gallery 39 Snowsfields GB-London SE1 3SU Telefon +44 20 7207 4578 Fax +44 20 7207 0593 E-Mail info@percymillergallery.com www.percymillergallery.com |
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