CURRENTLY UNTITLED
Exhibition
Exhibition
Ami Morris (b. 1990, Naarm/Melbourne) was the first artist to ever present a body of work at OIGÅLL, back in 2021, when the paint was still peeling off the walls and we were pretending to know what we were doing (we are still pretending that).
Several years on, she returns. Older, wiser, and with a new body of work that feels all the more assured for it.
Morris’ large-scale works unfold slowly, built up over months in the studio through a process of accumulation, erasure, and quiet persistence. Fields of colour are scumbled, scraped, and reworked, holding traces of their own making: oil pastel crumbs, cotton fibres, fragments of the studio itself embedded into the surface like evidence.
There is a kind of tension in them, between control and collapse, gesture and restraint. They nod, perhaps, to the long tail of abstraction, but refuse to sit comfortably within it. Instead, they feel closer to something lived-in. Bruised, smeared, delicate, and unexpectedly lyrical.
For her return to OIGÅLL, Morris presents a new body of work that feels both expanded and distilled.
The exhibition centres on four large-scale paintings, developed using a hard wax medium, an approach she has, by her own admission, become completely consumed by. The surfaces are denser, slower, more deliberate. Built through layers that hold and resist, rather than dissolve.
These works are darker in tone, but not heavy. Not morose. Instead, they carry a kind of quiet authority, a maturity that feels self-assured rather than resolved. The paintings buzz at a lower frequency: atmospheric, immersive.
There is a sense of calm running through them, as though they are tuned to something just beyond the studio. A broader creative field. A shared, if intangible, energy.
Alongside the paintings, Morris introduces two large-scale sculptural works, totemic forms constructed from concrete, cardboard, and found ephemera. They feel at once provisional and permanent. As though assembled quickly, but destined to stay.
Together, the works mark a shift in her practice. Not a departure, but an opening, into material, into space, into something slightly stranger.
To have her back feels both fitting and surreal. A return, but not a repeat.
Several years on, she returns. Older, wiser, and with a new body of work that feels all the more assured for it.
Morris’ large-scale works unfold slowly, built up over months in the studio through a process of accumulation, erasure, and quiet persistence. Fields of colour are scumbled, scraped, and reworked, holding traces of their own making: oil pastel crumbs, cotton fibres, fragments of the studio itself embedded into the surface like evidence.
There is a kind of tension in them, between control and collapse, gesture and restraint. They nod, perhaps, to the long tail of abstraction, but refuse to sit comfortably within it. Instead, they feel closer to something lived-in. Bruised, smeared, delicate, and unexpectedly lyrical.
For her return to OIGÅLL, Morris presents a new body of work that feels both expanded and distilled.
The exhibition centres on four large-scale paintings, developed using a hard wax medium, an approach she has, by her own admission, become completely consumed by. The surfaces are denser, slower, more deliberate. Built through layers that hold and resist, rather than dissolve.
These works are darker in tone, but not heavy. Not morose. Instead, they carry a kind of quiet authority, a maturity that feels self-assured rather than resolved. The paintings buzz at a lower frequency: atmospheric, immersive.
There is a sense of calm running through them, as though they are tuned to something just beyond the studio. A broader creative field. A shared, if intangible, energy.
Alongside the paintings, Morris introduces two large-scale sculptural works, totemic forms constructed from concrete, cardboard, and found ephemera. They feel at once provisional and permanent. As though assembled quickly, but destined to stay.
Together, the works mark a shift in her practice. Not a departure, but an opening, into material, into space, into something slightly stranger.
To have her back feels both fitting and surreal. A return, but not a repeat.