ART Sue Morris exhibits at Custom House Studios

Childhood mind and counterpoints explored in new exhibition


A challenging yet charming exhibition is opening at Custom House Studios, Westport, this Thursday, March 10. ‘10,000 Things Every Child Should Know, The World of Wonder’, by Sue Morris, is inspired by an encyclopedia the artist has owned since early childhood.
Morris explains that the heavy tome was “a source of pictures before I could read, essential reference for school homework and projects … carried with each relocation, from family home to college digs, city to city and across international borders.”
The encyclopedia in question wears its age (the late 1950s/early ’60s) on every page – both visually and linguistically; its content reflects a particular time and mindset. “The promise of advancing technology in the post-war/post-colonial era spawned a tide of naïve optimism,” explains the artist. “Before the advent of Photoshop and Wikipedia, its authoritative text, diagrams, illustrations and photographs are at first glance fully convincing, but on closer inspection open a world of ambiguity.
“My current work is an attempt, as a visual artist, to explore the territories of the real and the imagined, the explained and yet unexplainable. In a child’s mind particularly, the two often collide and overlap. By referencing the encyclopedia’s images and text, manipulating scale, colour and content, deploying its pseudo-scientific style and rendering, I re-enter the vistas of childhood from an adult standpoint.”
The territories are explored via pairs of objects, one a counterpoint to the other – and a myriad of conceptually contrasting notions are considered in arresting images: the perceived versus the unknown; truth versus illusion; authenticity versus facsimile; presence and absence; science and art; public space and private space.
Sue Morris studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She moved to Ireland in the early ’90s and now lives in Co Sligo. She has exhibited widely in the UK and Ireland and has had work commissioned by, and held, in corporate, public and private collections. She currently has a studio residence at the Model Arts Centre Sligo.

‘10,000 Things Every Child Should Know, The World of Wonder’ opens at the Custom House Studios Gallery, The Quay, Westport, on Thursday, March 10, at 7.30pm. It will run until  3rd April 3.