Pursuing the research she began ten years ago, the artist now examines the theme of the Romantic Condition through surprising digital photographs and a sound installation whose whispers will echo through the industrial architecture of the Darling Foundry.
The body of work is in fact quite spectacular. Joey Morgan presents the state of her reasoning by exhibiting a collection of digital photographs of hearts, each one as different as the other. Marked by emotional experiences, sometimes leaving scars, these hearts also present themselves as organs in stages of mutation. They call to mind both the vegetal and mineral universe. However each specimen can be perceived as a metaphor of the human existence, a portrait of a life lived.
Aesthetically very beautiful, these digital photographs play on our attraction to their singularity. Although in this case the technical virtuosity of the computer acts as the paint brush, these works recall the history of art in the way in which they are displayed. They are presented in an affective and classical manner, seducing and intriguing us within the raw vocation of the industrial space. The meeting between the work and the space successfully gives birth to the poetic vision of the artist.
The second aspect of the exhibition is derived from it's other half. The work is in fact details of the previous images covered over and over many times with varnish. Arranged as though a punctuation of a surface, these small paintings express here a rhythm and there an intensity. Forever both seductive and strange, these abstract images transport us in to a universe in which the imprint of an unknown life remains.
Then, you will make your way around to a sound installation whose warm and sensual human voice resounds in your ears. This time the change of heart is obvious. Life is shelled with it's share of emotions that shape the organ of life, the center of emotions, there precisely where they begin. This is why from within this dark recess, the sound can barely be heard. Does mystery not always surround what is felt and experienced?
Manon Blanchette
Joey Morgan
Over the past twenty-five years Joey Morgan has produced many public works and multidisciplinary installations that have been exhibited both in urban waste lands as well as in museums and galleries in the United States, Australia, Denmark and France and in several places throughout Canada, notably, among others, at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Power Plant in Toronto, The Contemporary Museum of Montreal and at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff.
She represented Canada in 1992 at the Sydney Biennale in 1996 in Copenhagen's 96 Containers. She has received many prizes both for her work in the visual arts as well as for her publications. Holder of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the British Columbia Cultural Fund and the Vermont Council for the Arts, Joey Morgan has also created sound compositions, artists books and video art.
Recently, she was showing at the Sherbrooke University gallery and at the Passerelle Art Center in Brest, France. Joey Morgan lives and works in the United States.