Geoff Morrell
 

Geoff Morrell is well-known as a performing artist, being at the forefront of many leading theatre, film and television productions in Australia over the last 25 years. He is also a highly talented visual artist, and has  been practising and exhibiting his unique style of sculpture, assemblage and painting for the last 15 years. While the mediums and visual style have evolved over the years, the one constant has been his love and use of found materials, which have been shaped and transformed by their exposure to the elements.

Material as landscape is an idea which underlies all of Geoff’s work. The notion that a piece of wood or metal is shaped and transformed by its exposure to the elements and therefore, by some kind of natural alchemy, turns into landscape, can certainly feed the obsession of any collector of "interesting sticks". And Geoff’s work has evolved through many decades of actually collecting material, a personal journey and remembrance of places he has visited - each piece of material a reflection of where it was found.

“My working method is not dissimilar to the sculptor’s process of finding the image hidden in the material - releasing the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary.  The materials used in these works I have found over the last two year – for example: discarded linoleum, wood and metal from Paddington terraces, outback sheds and country woodpiles.  For me, the scars of decomposition and usage can, when rearranged artificially, reveal hidden images at different places and times”   Geoff Morrell

While the material itself is never altered, it is sometimes combined with panels of oil paint, predominantly blues and ochres, playing off each other to produce vivid landscapes. More recently Geoff has been fragmenting the material, cutting across grains, revealing hidden subtle colours and textures, then reassembling to create the different landscape within. It is often the material that not only determines the form, but also the working practice. Some pieces of material are already landscapes within themselves, while others have to be fragmented and reassembled in order to reveal their hidden form.

Geoff’s work, in private collections in Australia, England and the USA, has been shown in sixteen Exhibitions in Sydney since 1995, including four Solo shows. 

1995                 Seaside Arts Festival, Thirroul
                        Group Show
1996                 Pork Chop “Performers as Artists”, Level Gallery, Newtown
                        Group Show
1997                 “Two Blokes Show“, Bondi Wadi Gallery
                        Geoff Morrell and Max Cullen
1997                 Christmas Show, Bondi Wadi Gallery
                        Group Show
1998                 Bondi Wadi Gallery
                        Solo Exhibition
1998                 Christmas Show, Bondi Wadi Gallery
                        Group Show
1999                 “Blue” Astro Gallery, Paddington
                        Solo Show
2000                 “Actors as Artists“, North Sydney Fine Art Gallery
                        Group Show
2000                 “From the Centre” Astro Gallery. Paddington
                        Solo Exhibition
2000                 “Creation” Astro Gallery, Paddington
                        Group Show
2001                 “Six Months in the Meadow” Bondi Wadi Gallery
                        Solo Show
2001                 “Three Artists” - Sydney Theatre Company Gallery
                        Geoff Morrell, Rachael Szalay, Max Cullen
2002                 “Caffe Latte” Hill on Hargrave Gallery, Paddington
                        Solo Exhibition
2002                 Christmas Show, Hill on Hargrave Gallery, Paddington
2003-Present     Harris Courtin Gallery, Paddington: Various Group shows








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