Visual Arts
Morgan Allender
Morgan Allender’s painted portraits have been produced within an unravelling obsession with snow and ice: two words to describe water in its frozen state yet two words that sit poles apart in terms of cultural understanding. The first evokes the warmth of Christmas, snowmen, decorated trees and rosy firesides. The latter conjures up hardness, coldness, reddened skin and bitter environs.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
These paintings similarly juxtapose the sentimental and the sinister; a rose-coloured glasses mentality versus 21st Century cynicism. Snow is articulated in these works as both deliciously seductive and dangerously abhorrent.
Within the domes lie staged scenes of sentimental reverie. These girls on ice are engrossed in domestic grooming practices, the rhythmic brushing of hair, applying of makeup, talking on the phone; the stuff of teenage slumber parties and softly furnished bedrooms. Trapped within their icy confines, however, these ice maidens are cut off from the outside world. Snowflakes pile up at the bottom of the picture plain, threatening to envelop, a silent suffocation. There is an underlying discomfort, an urgency, as time slowly, softly, runs out.
BIO
Morgan Allender completed a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours at Adelaide Central School of Art in 2004. As recipient of the 5-year Pro Hart Scholarship, she majored in painting, working predominantly within the landscape genre.
Since graduating she has exhibited in both South Australia and interstate, with spaces that include the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia’s Project Space, Downtown, and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. A finalist in the 2004 Fleurieu Peninsula Prize for Landscape, she was also listed by The Advertiser as ‘Best Emerging Painter for 2005’.
Currently she is one of ten artists holding residency in the Experimental Art Foundation Studios, South Australia. She works part-time in the bookshops at both the Art Gallery of South Australia and the South Australian Museum.
Morgan has exhibited as part of Carclew's
Fifth Floor project.
