jamey morrill | larvae
DESCRIPTION
LARVAE by JAMEY MORRILL is comprised of sculptural forms made from plastic bottles, monofilament, and drywall screws. These odd, yet beautifully translucent and luminous forms resemble tightly wound chrysalides seemingly in a dormant state.TRANSCRIPT
J A M E Y M O R R I L L
L A R V A E
LARVAE by JAMEY MORRILL is comprised of sculptural forms made from plastic bottles, monofilament, and drywall screws. These odd, yet beautifully translucent and luminous forms resemble tightly wound chrysalides seemingly in a dormant state.
"In our culture, mass production of products appears similar to the reproductive strategy of insects – where risk and cost are spread thin as gossamer over many to assure the advancement of a few,” notes Morrill.
Copyright © Yellow Peril Gallery, Providence, Rhode IslandAll Photographs © Jamey Morrill / Inside Photo: Emma Fague
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LARVAE, 2012, Jamey Morrill
LARVAE, a sculpture installation by Jamey Morrill at Yellow Peril, consists of mundane, seemingly benign materials that collectively become imposing and uncanny.
Jamey Morrill is a Providence-based sculptor and adjunct professor of art at Rhode Island College in Providence, RI. In recent years Morrill’s sculpture has become increasingly sprawling and site-specific, with emphasis on mass-pro-duced materials and organic forms. Often using common-place materials, such as plastic bottles, chicken wire, and duct tape, Morrill constructs sculptures that are outwardly cerebral and systematic but that are fundamentally random and irrational.
Morrill recently completed a residency at Fountainhead in Miami and was nominated for the Rappaport Prize from the DeCordova Museum in 2010 and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant in 2009. Previous select solo and group exhibitions include: Locust Projects, Miami (2011 & 2012), Curfman Gallery at Colorado State University (2011), Maya Allison Projects (2010), Aqua Art Fair, Miami (2009) and David Winton Bell Gallery (2005). He received his M.F.A. in Sculpture from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2002 and his B.A in Art History from Bowdoin College in 1992.
LARVAE 001, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
22" L x 15" W x 18" H
2.1 lbs | $1,239
4 LARVAE | JAMEY MORRILLyellowperilgallery.com
What first drew you to large-scale installation work?
I don’t recall making a conscious decision to build large installation sculpture. I think there must have been a collision of factors involved/ My
first sculpture instructor, Imi Hwangbo, was an ambitious, young artist whose work was often sprawling. In class Imi showed slides of similarly
large-scale sculpture projects by other artists. She invited guest speakers such as Patrick Dougherty and Joe Seipel, whose art was not merely
large-scaled, but also odd or witty or unclassifiable. The lasting lesson I drew from Imi’s class was the wide-open, even lawless, nature of
sculpture. To me sculpture seemed at once a laboratory and playground. Even now, sculpture feels liberating to me – a room without walls.
Apart from Imi’s influence on my early development, there was an energy and enthusiasm I felt at age 27 of having finally found what I
wanted to do with my life. Perhaps I possessed a suppressed energy that was suddenly released. Maybe this translated most naturally into big
projects rather than modestly-sized objects.
Your work seems to address a juxtaposition of assumed opposites, such as strange almost negative forms assembled from mundane everyday objects. How did you get interested in this sort of dialogue?
I wish I could say that I were a systematic thinker. My choices as an artist are not deliberate in the way the arguments of a philosopher are.
I am continually drawn to mundane, mass-produced materials in a visceral way. I do not choose a material because I see it as a vehicle for
some argument I am trying to build, but because I respond to it emotionally. Many times people have seen politics in my sculpture, which is
possible, but not intentional on my part.
Yellow Peril Gallery Curator Robert P. Stack delves deeper into the mind of Jamey Morrill to gain
more insight into the origin of LARVAE.
LARVAE | JAMEY MORRILLyellowperilgallery.com 5
With the Larvae series, there appears to be this comparison drawn between natural organic process and man-made mass-produced industrialization. Can you expound upon this coupling of what is often assumed to be polar opposites?
I feel there is a tension that results from the juxtaposition of
outwardly dissimilar or opposing materials. In Larvae, for instance,
there is a combination of plastic bottles and drywall screws.
Normally, this combination would result in a failure of the bottle, and
likely, a mess. But in Larvae the screws act as an anchorage for the
monofilament, which binds the bottle forms together.
Despite making the construction of the forms possible, the drywall
screws are undeniably aggressive, even violent in appearance. For
me this dual quality of the drywall screws rings true. This quality
applies to nature and culture, though we often prefer a sanitized
view of the world – where there is harmony and no discord, and
where there is a clear line between man and wild nature. This view
would shift, I expect, and perhaps also our self-image, if we suddenly
had to slaughter an animal for our next meal.
So, as sterile as a plastic bottle may be, it is nonetheless derived from
ancient, decomposed marine plants and animals, now buried deep
below ground. Maybe, then, it is not a such a stretch to envision a
plastic bottle reborn as something alive, such as an insect larva.
LARVAE 002, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
28" L x 14" W x 15" H
2.1 lbs | $1,239
LARVAE | JAMEY MORRILLyellowperilgallery.com 7
LARVAE 003, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
36" L x 11" W x 15" H
2.8 lbs | $1,652
8 LARVAE | JAMEY MORRILLyellowperilgallery.com
LARVAE | JAMEY MORRILLyellowperilgallery.com 9
LARVAE 004, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
24" L x 18" W x 22" H
2.5 lbs | $1,475
LARVAE 005, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
22" L x 13" W x 16" H
2.0 lbs | $1,180
LARVAE 006, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
24" L x 13" W x 15" H
2.0 lbs | $1,180
LARVAE 007, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
26" L x 15" W x 14" H
2.4 lbs | $1,416
fs 032, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
29" L x 18" W x 19" H
3.3 lbs | $1,947
12 LARVAE | JAMEY MORRILLyellowperilgallery.com
There is a certain minimalist approach in terms of palette, materials and forms. What inspires this?
I am fascinated by the idea that an oak tree can spring from an acorn,
or an immense Bach Fugue from a single musical idea. I once read
that the first job of the artist is to establish a small set of rules and
restrictions. The second job is to exhaust those rules and limits. This is
always the way I have proceeded. Limits are liberating. Have you ever
seen the home-made soccer balls children use in impoverished, rural
Africa? They are more imaginative, inventive, and exuberant than
anything I’ve seen in Chelsea lately.
How is your current work evolving from past successes?
Well, as a rule, I am trying to compress my work, that is, to work
smaller. I am interested to find out if I can make smaller pieces
without losing the intensity and ambition of earlier installations. So,
yes, I am trying to have it both ways. I want to continue the unruly
and playful nature of previous sculpture projects while working on
the wall at a modest scale. Larvae is perhaps my last tango with the
large format. But who knows? I have another idea I want to explore. It
involves a large outdoor site, sound, and lights. So, in short, I am not
truly reformed.
LARVAE 008, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
23" L x 16: W x 15" H
2.3 lbs | $1,357
LARVAE 009, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
19" L x 13" W x 14" H
1.8 lbs | $1,062
LARVAE 010, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
30" L x 13" W x 16" H
2.5 lbs | $1,475
LARVAE 011, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
27" L x 13" W x 16" H
2.4 lbs | $1,416
LARVAE 012, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
12" L x 19" W x 19"
2.5 lbs | $1,475
LARVAE 013, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
25" L x 11" W x 18" H
1.9 lbs | $1,121
LARVAE 014, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
21" L x 15" W x 15" H
1.9 lbs | $1,121
LARVAE 015, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
27" L x 18" W x 21" H
2.6 lbs | $1,534
LARVAE 016, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
21" L x 12" W x 14" H
1.9 lbs | $1,121
LARVAE 017, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
23" L x 13" W x 15" H
2.2 lbs | $1,298
LARVAE 018, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
24" L x 14" W x 15" H
2.3 lbs | $1,357
LARVAE 021, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
25" L x 12" W x 15" H
2.0 lbs | $1,180
LARVAE 020, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
27" L x 13" W x 15" H
2.3 lbs | $1,357
LARVAE 022, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
19" L x 12" W x 17" H
1.9 lbs | $1,121
LARVAE | JAMEY MORRILLyellowperilgallery.com 17
LARVAE 019, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
26" L x 13" W x 16" H
2.3 lbs | $1,357
18 LARVAE | JAMEY MORRILLyellowperilgallery.com
LARVAE 028, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
32" L x 14" W x 28" H
2.3 lbs | $1,357
LARVAE 023, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
24" L x 19" W x 18" H
2.3 lbs | $1,357
LARVAE 024, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
20" L x 12" W x 14" H
1.7 lbs | $1,003
LARVAE 025, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
22" L x 13" W x 14" H
1.8 lbs | $1,062
LARVAE 026, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
22" L x 16" W x 15" H
2.3 lbs | $1,357
LARVAE 027, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
33" L x 17" W x 18" H
2.6 lbs | $1,534
LARVAE 029, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
26" L x 16" W x 16" H
2.2 lbs | $1,298
LARVAE 030, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
20" L x 14" W x 14" H
1.9 lbs | $1,121
LARVAE 031, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
20" L x 15" W x 15" H
1.8 lbs | $1,062
LARVAE 034, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
20"L x 12" W x 12" H
1.3 lbs | $767
LARVAE 033, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
25" L x 19" W x 16" H
3.1 lbs | $1,829
LARVAE 035, 2012
Plastic Bottles, Monofilament Line, Dry-Wall Screws
18" L x 16" W x 17" H
1.8 lbs | $1,062
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LARVAE © 2012 Yellow Peril GalleryArtworks © Jamey Morrill
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of the publisher
EDITORRobert P. Stack
PUBLISHERYellow Peril Gallery60 Valley Street #5Providence, RI 02909yellowperilgallery.com
PRODUCTION + DESIGNYellow Peril Gallery
PHOTOGRAPHYJamey MorillEmma Fague: p. 3
INTERVIEWCOLLECT, Winter 2012
LARVAE at Yellow Peril GalleryExhibition Dates: 11/15/12 - 12/09/12
PRINTED IN USA