Event date: 15 May 2024
Review by Carl Rowe
Mali Morris and Carl Rowe
The first slide lit up the screen with squares of vibrant pinks, reds and blues, all circulating around the centre of a colourful grid. A warm ripple of pleasure spread through the seated audience. Mali’s gentle voice accompanied the image of her painting, and then she steamed into an hour of vivid recollections and tantalising explanations. Just like the jazz drummer John Stevens of whom Mali talked so warmly, she revealed through her talk the improvisations, risks, tricks and freedom with which she makes paintings. The results are points at which a process of excavation have been halted. Paintings run into trouble, don’t work, but then through an enjoyable process of determination, come to a point of conclusion.
Mali Morris studied Fine Art at University of Newcastle upon Tyne, graduating in 1968, and two years later received a Master of Fine Art from the University of Reading. Her early career combined studio practice with teaching, visiting art schools around the country forming impromptu associations with fellow artists as they too travelled back and forth to teach and earn their studio rent. There is a powerful sense of community and sociability running through her practice. Mali is a founding member of A.P.T Studios and Gallery (Art in Perpetuity Trust) in Deptford, an organisation that offers crucial support to emerging artists. Mali is now established as one of the country’s most influential painters with artworks in internationally important collections and exhibitions.
Painting in this century has been haunted by Robert Morris’s notion of its historically weighed down and ‘antique mode’. But Mali’s paintings fit into a new modality, one that acknowledges the past and rebirths it with a contemporary vigour. Her spirited approach to colour and formalism offers much to inspire a new generation of artists. It is quite revelaing to compare Mali’s paintings with her Instagram feed, where in the latter we find impetus, social concerns, and humanism. She showed some incidental photographs in her talk, fragments, and insights into a thought process, but this is just the surface. Mali is driven by memories of family, of nurturing, of friends, of partners, of classical painting, of music. This comes through her use of colour and form. But there is always obfuscation, be it a sideways glance at a shape that might be something, or a wiping away of something to reveal something else, or a system imposed upon a freedom or vice versa. There is generosity, but also something held back.
Mali talked carefully and meaningfully for just over an hour, and then answered questions for another thirty minutes. I think she could have continued had we not run out of time. The eagerness with which members of the audience took the opportunity to continue conversations at the conclusion of the talk demonstrated Mali’s appeal. The eagerness with which Mali happily engaged with everyone mirrored the energy and convivial nature of her paintings.
Review by former ncas trustee Carl Rowe