Friday 14 July to Saturday 14 October 2023
Open Tuesday to Saturday, free entry
Morrissey came to prominence in the early 2000s among a generation of female photographers working with staged photography, often putting themselves in the picture. Throughout her career, the artist has combined performance, photography, and film to play real and fictional characters. Using herself, and in collaboration with others, Morrissey’s practice explores historic and contemporary ideas about women, family and the body. Morrissey appears in her photographs and films, sometimes performing all the roles herself, and often chooses characters with whom she identifies. This creates a kind of ‘autofiction’ whereby experiences from her own life are explored through the stories of others. Themes of motherhood and female inheritance run through the exhibition, with Morrissey collaborating with her mother, sister and daughter in several works. Broadly chronological, Autofictions is loosely structured around a narrative about female experience from youth to middle age, and beyond.
The exhibition brings back to Impressions Gallery selections from Morrissey’s seminal photographic series Seven Years (2001-2004) and Front, (2005-2007) both commissioned by Impressions and developed over long periods of time. In Seven Years the artist and her sister re-enact real and imagined scenes from family photographs, their gestures implying hidden narratives and revealing the psychological tensions embedded in the family photograph album. For the series Front, Morrissey approached families on the beach and asked if she could swap places with a female member of the group - usually the mother figure - whilst they pressed the shutter on the camera. The title of the series refers to the literal beachfront (the boundary of land and sea) and the forwardness of infiltrating a family unit. The results of what happens when physical and psychological boundaries are crossed are both compelling and unsettling.
Trish Morrissey says, ‘Autofictions explores the dual nature of my work whereby my own biography weaves in and out of the stories of others using my body as a means of both reenactment and personal reflection. Impressions Gallery supported me early in my career and holds a special place in my heart, so it is fantastic to return with this survey exhibition of my work from the past twenty years.’
Anne McNeill, Director of Impressions Gallery says, ‘Impressions Gallery has a longstanding relationship with Trish Morrissey. We are delighted to present this major survey exhibition staging a selection of her most influential projects, including bodies of work not shown in the UK before. Morrissey’s utilises humour and wit as visual strategies to reflect on the transgenerational female experience.’
Exhibition Launch
Friday 14 July 2023, 5.00pm to 7.00pm.
All welcome to this free exhibition launch for Trish Morrissey: Autofictions. Twenty Years
of Photography and Film, with a chance to meet the artist Trish Morrissey and enjoy
refreshments.
In Conversation with Trish Morrisey and Kate Best + Book signing
Saturday 15 July 2023, 12.00pm to 1.30pm
Join us for a conversation between artist Trish Morrissey and curator Kate Best, and find out
more about the artist’s career and this survey exhibition. There will be a book signing session
afterwards. Free, donations welcome, booking advised.
Time for Tea
Thursday 17 August 2023, 11.30am to 1.30pm
Come and enjoy our current exhibition Autofictions with free tea and cake at this friendly,
social morning in the gallery. Free, donations welcome, drop in.
Feed Your Mind: Trish Morrissey’s Film Works
Thursday 21 September 2023, 12.30pm to 1.30pm
Join us for a lunchtime screening of six short films by Trish Morrissey.
Morrissey’s exhibition Trish Morrissey: Autofictions – Twenty years of photography and filmis on show at Impressions Gallery from 15 July to 14 October 2023, and brings together photographs and films spanning over twenty years of the artist’s career.
Before the screening, Anne McNeill, director of Impressions Gallery, will give a short introduction to the exhibition and film works.
Films and running order (total runtime approx 30 minutes)
- Eighteen and Forty Five, 2004 (3 mins 20 secs)
- Ideas of Refinement, Principles of Taste, 2008 (4 mins)
- Ave Maria Karaoke, 2010 (2 mins, 38 secs)
- Six Scenes, 2017 (6 mins, 12 secs)
- Eliza, 2017 (6 mins, 12 secs)
- Madge, 2021 (8 mins, 2 secs)
Photo credit: Trish Morrissey