Simon Morris - When each action opens

Simon Morris
When each action opens
11 June – 3 July 2021
Opening 5.30pm, Friday 11 June.
In conversation with Dr Martin Patrick Saturday 19 June.

Jhana Millers is pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Simon Morris, When each action opens.

Simon is well known in Aotearoa for his tightly geometric, methodical, and richly-¬layered paintings whether large-scale wall works, or smaller more intimate works on linen. His painting practice explores the structures and boundaries of abstraction, considering the way that colour and form can activate and inform our sense of a space. Simon’s approach is meditative and frequently mathematical, exploring the possibilities offered by self-imposed restraints of time, scale and pigment.

In his practice, Simon thinks about control and change, about the body and about contemplation, meeting the busy demands of life in the modern world at the moment of painting – they encourage him, and us, to take time, to be still.

A new large scale, site-responsive wall drawing forms the basis of the exhibition, which also brings three similar yet contrasting approaches to painting together for the first time — the subtle dilution of pigment, the accumulation of pigment, and the combining of pigment. All moments of change moving between dark and light, transparent and opaque, separate pigments and one pigment. Sensation between colours. Made in single sessions, or over a period of days, the paintings are grounded in action. Layered time.

Whilst actively exhibiting in other parts of Aotearoa and around the globe, this is the first solo exhibition Simon has had in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, his hometown, in a decade. We are honoured to be presenting this exhibition and look forward to sharing these works with you.

Simon Morris is an Associate Professor at Whiti O Rehua School of Art, Massey University, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington.

Recent solo exhibitions include: When Light Meets Surface, Shibukawa, Japan (2019); Falling Light, Two Rooms, Auckland (2018); Simon Morris, Alcove Space. Amsterdam (2017); A Whole and Two Halves, Amsterdam, Dunedin and Auckland (2017). Recent group exhibitions include 3CM Museum Chi k11 Artspace, Shenyang, China (2019); Act of Reversal: Some Abstraction from China, New Zealand and Australia, Melbourne (2019);

Infinite Worlds / Infinite Probabilities, Toowoomba (2018); WestFarbe: Paint vs Colour, Siegburg (Germany), Auckland, Christchurch (2018). In 2017 Morris was awarded the Fulbright Award to attend the artist in residence programme at Headlands Centre for the Arts in San Francisco. His public projects over the past decade have included elaborate wall drawings, architectural commissions, and site-specific works, most notably Yellow Ochre Room, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2015), Light in Space, and Space in Light, Otago University (2007); and Rainscreen, The Dowse Art Museum (2006).

His works are in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa, The Chartwell Collection, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Germany, The Dowse Art Museum, The Suter Gallery, Victoria University and more.