Headcase on display at Christchurch Art Gallery

Julia Morison: Headcase on display at Christchurch Art Gallery

One hundred playfully surreal depictions of the human head are on display at the Christchurch Art Gallery.

Headcase, the latest exhibition of works by Christchurch artist Julia Morison, features an installation of seven small hexagonal rooms and more than 100 ceramic heads, each based on the form of the anonymous hat-maker’s block.

Morison says she wanted the heads to be non-specific and genderless to encourage the viewer to explore their own interpretation of the artwork.

“We live in the same world but we all experience it in subtly different ways and we know from science and physics that the universe is vastly different than how we see it. These works come from the same mould but are completely different in the way they might interact with the world around them.”

Each of Morison’s ceramic heads is made distinctly different from the next by the addition of exaggerated features, peculiar appendages and uneasy textures. An excess of production, a riot of form, an assembly of strange types, Headcase is a playfully surreal work.

Bearing only a cursory relationship to the human head, we nevertheless can’t help but imagine Morison’s mutated heads coming alive, what strange new senses and ways of understanding the world they might reveal.

Morison, of Christchurch’s most inventive artists, will discuss her life and work with head curator Lara Strongman on the opening day of her exhibition, Saturday 23 February at 3pm.

Julia Morison: Headcase is on display at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū from 23 February to 14 July 2019. Check out our website here for more information.

ENDS

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