Katharine Morling

Fantasy or reality? Katharine Morling’s black and white graphic objects have a theatrical presence. They suggest to the viewer a dream world, hint at times past, resonate nostalgia or look to highlight the mundane. To Morling the individual pieces are an emotional narrative of her life, metaphors, that embody particular incidents or events that lurk in her subconscious waiting to be transformed through her making into the surreal creations of her imagination.

An array of carpentry tools spill out of a case, a handbag holds a set of precision measuring instruments, an old fashioned cash register spills out money, tape measures unravel along a ledge to meet up with a collection of scissors. There is poetry in the composition of her works. The assemblage of different elements put together to create a whole is visually rich and potent, more often than not with a duality in meaning. By using imagery that touches on the soothing familiarity of the ‘everyday’ or the sweetness of fantasy she momentarily disguises an underlying sense of the macabre and sinister and this duality in meaning is only revealed after closer scrutiny of the individual objects and their relationship to each other.

For the exhibition, ‘Animated Life’, Morling continues to develop ideas that have layers of meaning, works that grapple with childhood fantasy or perhaps stir up a neurosis that has lain dormant. The main focus is a new and complex work titled ‘Trojan House’, a house on stilts with rooms, as the title suggests, that are filled with miniature houses, the whole connected by bridges and ladders. As with a dolls house, the scale and intricacy of the construction is absorbing and there is a sense of wonder as our eyes move from room to room, house to house. Each miniature building is recognisably different in architectural style and taken at face value the piece might well be called ‘home sweet home’. But as with all Morling’s work there is a further meaning personal to her that denotes the coming together of her various life experiences. The bridges and ladders suggestive of the game ‘snakes and ladders’ carry her fortunes, create connections and signify attachments, associations and relationships with people and buildings.

Ceramics is a good imitator of other materials, adeptly used in the past to ape marble, stone and wood. In some respects, Morling is following this tradition, for the material from which she makes her work is not immediately apparent. Her soft fluid forms and use of a monochromatic palette prompts the question, fabric, paper or Clay? Closer inspection reveals that the pieces are clearly ceramic, porcelain painted with strong black pigment applied with fine brush strokes to define the structure, and detail of each object. The simplicity of this treatment is compelling and leaves room for the imagination and a personal interpretation of the work.

Recreating the familiar, tables and chairs, tools, boxes and cases, bunches of keys, discarded children’s toys, she carefully creates stories that start to unravel in the viewers mind and we become voyeurs of another world, one that for Morling is a fragile reality.

Felicity Aylieff, Artist and Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art, Ceramics & Glass dept, October 2011

Please contact Sarah Long, Carolyn Ryle Hodges, or Ruth Knox for further information.

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