Last Night Out Dancing
Paintings by Michael Morley
Imagine a world conceived in freedom. The freedom to listen to the music of your choice, to wear the clothes that you want, to sing and dance in a complete frenzy of utter joy and happiness. To be exuberant and profane. To care for one another without judgement.
That was a world I thought I existed within. Now - what if that world has been lost?
I am trying to re-imagine that past, making paintings do the job of documentary.
Allowing these memories to slip and slide through time as they do.
Late nights, alcohol, drugs, and lust may blur the specifics but they do not obliterate the truth.
The paintings conjure places and they are also conjure relationships, and then because of that special quality they may also be about communion, the sense that the individual is just that and that community and society are all important to our sense of belonging.
Trust.
MM 14Oct22
Michael Morley’s paintings defy simple characterisation. Just as his music foregrounds the instrumental over the vocal, these quasi-representational paintings are defiantly dumb. They defer, they dodge, they’re unwilling to speak. They shrug off narrative, spectacle and conventional good taste. These paintings are cursory echoes of our current conditions—joyously playful and camp in their palette, form and materiality.
Best known for his work as an experimental musician, Morley is a member of seminal noise band The Dead C (together with Bruce Russell and Robbie Yeats). He also produces music under the moniker Gate, and has previously collaborated with artists Kim Gordon, Bill Nace, Lee Ranaldo, Nina Canal, Sara Stephenson, and others. In tandem with this musical career, he has consistently maintained a studio practice as a painter.
Michael Morley (b. 1963, Ahiriri Napier) lives and works in Kōpūtai Port Chalmers. He is a lecturer in painting and drawing at the Dunedin School of Art, Ōtepoti. His research expertise encompasses contemporary art, drawing, painting, video, and sound. He has exhibited and performed extensively across Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and his work represented in numerous important public and private collections throughout New Zealand and internationally.
Michael Morley is represented by Sumer