sophie morrish

Island Time showcases the work of the Scottish artist, Sophie Morrish. The exhibition is drawn from the decade 2007-17, to reflect the central themes of her diverse output during that period, when Morrish lived and worked on North Uist in the Outer Hebrides.

Morrish’s work of this decade is characterised by her imaginative interaction with the landscape of the remote coastline of North Uist. Acknowledging the realities of chance and synchronicity (‘meaningful coincidence’), her work emerges from prolonged acts of close attention to the events and objects of the natural world around her.

Walking, beachcombing, photography and collecting – feathers, carcasses, bones, pebbles, egg fragments, seaweeds, beached flotsam – are her principal means to an intense primary engagement with the dynamic actualities of life and death on the shore of the world.

Her re-working and arrangement of these media and materials in beautiful and meticulous drawings, paintings, photographic displays and spectacular arrays of natural objects are rich with ontological, taxonomical, political and aesthetic implications. Morrish turns our gaze back to the natural world and re-defines our deepest connection to it.

The exhibition combines photography, natural object arrays, drawings and sculptural works in a deeply coherent and constantly thought-provoking installation of discrete works.

Mel Gooding, July 2018