Helen Morgan’s exhibition Makeshift Arrangements is the culmination of her residency at Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios. Her art-making practice is focused on printmaking, and for this project she has been reflecting on the impact of growing up in a house that has been both cosy and comforting, but also imperfect and uneven. The house is dominated by materials – objects kept alongside the house, covered in tarps for protection from the elements, saved in case they might be useful at some unknown point in the future, or sometimes traded at markets. The varied textures, materiality, colours and shapes have informed her thinking, and Helen has brought aspects of these to her experimentations with printmaking.

 

Whilst most prints can be made in an edition, each of the prints in this exhibition are unique prints, “made using a combination of intaglio and relief printing on aquatinted copper plates… etched in a chemical solution to create textures on the surface.” Helen then experiments with the colours, matching them to the original materials or photographs from her childhood home. Helen says that her prints are “iterative and intuitive and all of the prints are unique-state prints.”

 

The title of the exhibition Makeshift arrangements refers to this house, but also to the vignettes that Helen has created within the gallery space. She has placed fragile, translucent prints made on Japanese paper, alongside original, found objects from her family home. A tarpaulin that might have been attached to the side of the house and protected objects from the weather is draped with delicacy and evokes baroque forms. Mesh screens are folded with delicacy. Faded and tarnished mirrors lean against the perfect, white wall.​

 

Helen has echoed the lines, colours and shapes from the materials found around her home and translated them into delicate prints on delicate Japanese paper. She has taken the formal elements of this informal architecture – and focused on their formal qualities. Helen has photographed small scenes and used the yellows and greens from the foliage and made prints from these colours. Greys from the tarpaulins or metal window frames are seen on opposing walls. She has taken these materials and made them abstract, perhaps creating a distance from their original, whilst making them infinitely beautiful.

 

What might be considered hoarding – holding on to all of these objects that may never be used – can have a weight. It’s heavy, to be burdened by all of these things that clutter the space. By printing onto translucent, delicate paper, Helen frees these objects and makes them into weightless hangings. This transformation beautifies them. They are delicate and precious, and deserve to be held onto and put on view.

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Kelly McDonald

Assistant Gallery Director / Senior Curator, Mosman Art Gallery

 

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