The vibrant, towering works of British artist Annie Morris are charged with energy, optimism and resilience. Her forthcoming exhibition, ‘When A Happy Thing Falls’, opens on 25 September 2021 in Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s Weston Gallery and coincides with a show at Timothy Taylor London and inclusion in Frieze Sculpture 2021.
The show's title was inspired by a poem in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies; its contents are rooted in personal tragedy and resilience. ‘The works in the exhibition have come from a personal tragedy of a stillborn baby’, says Morris. ‘The title suggests the moment just after loss. For me, this is the moment in which hope becomes vital. I wanted to make something that reminded me of this.’
Annie Morris' studio, 2021
The exhibition will comprise a ‘forest’ of imposing pigment and bronze Sculpture s, alongside framed tapestry works, or ‘thread paintings’. The artist sought to replicate the energy of her studio space – a former hummus factory in Stoke Newington that she shares with husband and fellow artist Idris Khan – within the Weston Gallery’s distinctive architecture, which was taken over by Holly Hendry in 2019. ‘I love the rhythm of the ceiling and it being one big open space,’ says the artist. Outside the gallery, Morris will position a 3.5m bronze Sculpture that will overlook the park’s art-studded vista, including Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man (1970), which has served as a key source of inspiration for Morris.
Morris’ most striking pieces – titled The Stacks – are precariously balanced columns of vibrant pigmented spheres that manage to simultaneously convey instability, equilibrium and fragility.
The artist hand-forms her pieces in plaster and sand. These are later cast in bronze, the spherical forms painted with hand-sourced, raw pigments – which she has worked with since studying at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris – in vivid ultramarine, viridian and ochre. ‘I have always been drawn to raw pigment. I wanted to try and capture pigment as it is, and before it dries. It has a certain lightness and richness that feels very alive and fragile.
Annie Morris, Stack 8, Ultramarine Blue, 2021, foam core, pigment, concrete, steel, sand and plaster.
Portrait of Annie Morris with Diaries, 2020
Annie Morris, Untitled, 2021, linen and thread
Annie Morris' studio, 2021.
INFORMATION
Annie Morris, ’When A Happy Thing Falls’, 25 September - 6 February 2022, The Weston Gallery and open air, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. ysp.org.uk
ADDRESSVIEW GOOGLE MAPS
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
West Bretton
Wakefield WF4 4LG
-
This Italian palazzo-turned-café adds a dash of drama to your morning espressoDesigned by studio AMAA, Caffè Nazionale brings new energy to a 19th-century former town hall in the northern Italian town of Arzignano
-
Wild side: the story behind our September 2025 Style Issue cover shootAn animalistic mood permeated the A/W 2025 collections, captured by Nicole Maria Winkler and Jason Hughes in our September 2025 Style Issue cover shoot. Here, they tell the story behind the pictures
-
Honor introduces an ultra-slim trio of new flagship foldable phone, tablet and laptopThin is in as Honor goes for style and substance with three new portable computing devices – a high-powered folding phone, tablet and laptop that offer anything but slim pickings
-
Inside the fight to keep an iconic Barbara Hepworth sculpture in the UK‘Sculpture with Colour’ captures a pivotal moment in Hepworth’s career. When it was sold to an overseas buyer, UK institutions launched a campaign to keep it in the country
-
Thirty-five years after its creation, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s seminal video is as poignant as everLynn Hershman Leeson’s 'Desire Inc', at 243 Luz in Margate, blurs the boundaries between art and reality
-
Rolf Sachs’ largest exhibition to date, ‘Be-rühren’, is a playful study of touchA collection of over 150 of Rolf Sachs’ works speaks to his preoccupation with transforming everyday objects to create art that is sensory – both emotionally and physically
-
Architect Erin Besler is reframing the American tradition of barn raisingAt Art Omi sculpture and architecture park, NY, Besler turns barn raising into an inclusive project that challenges conventional notions of architecture
-
A bespoke 40m mixed-media dragon is the centrepiece of Glastonbury’s new chill-out areaNew for 2025 is Dragon's Tail – a space to offer some calm within Glastonbury’s late-night area with artwork by Edgar Phillips at its heart
-
What is recycling good for, asks Mika Rottenberg at Hauser & Wirth MenorcaUS-based artist Mika Rottenberg rethinks the possibilities of rubbish in a colourful exhibition, spanning films, drawings and eerily anthropomorphic lamps
-
Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska’s new show at Kettle’s Yard will uncover the missing narratives in everyday life storiesThe artists and partners in life are collaborating on an immersive takeover of Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, in an exhibition that delves into a lost literary legacy
-
San Francisco’s controversial monument, the Vaillancourt Fountain, could be facing demolitionThe brutalist fountain is conspicuously absent from renders showing a redeveloped Embarcadero Plaza and people are unhappy about it, including the structure’s 95-year-old designer
