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Exercise Trish Morrissey
The coursebook asked me to look at 3 pieces of work by Trish Morrissey
Front (2005-7).
I this project, she visits beaches around the UK and Australia and gets random family groups to allow her to swap places with the mother including wearing their clothes and copying their mannerisms. She then assumes the physical place of the person, i.e. cuddling “her” children and/or snuggling up to “her” partner, while the person she replaces takes the photograph.
the artist’s statement,
These highly performative photographs are shaped by chance encounters with strangers, and by what happens when physical and psychological boundaries are crossed. Ideas around the mythological creature the ‘shapeshifter’ and the cuckoo are evoked.
The cuckoo metaphor very obviously (after reading the artists statement), and there is a sense of Morrissey taking advantage of the people involved. Obviously, they agreed to allow her to enter the group however the whole series gives off a sense that she has crossed boundaries, this is echoed by the boundaries the individual groups have built around themselves at the beach.
While I would love to go back and be a fly on the wall for the conversations that must have preceded each shoot – which no doubt were very interesting. I doubt I would have to Morrissey’s request, as a male I doubt I would have been asked but I would encourage anyone I was with to refuse too.
Interestingly, on the point not agreeing to the request, I doubt a male photographer would be able to accomplish this project – there would be much-ingrained resistance males rarely swap clothes with mates never mind strangers…
The Failed Realist (2011)
Based on a very interesting premise; that young children’s imagination is very much more mature than their ability to draw what they are seeing. The project consists of a number of portraits of Morrissey, with her face daubed in face paints by her daughter. Which are a mess due to the daughter being too young to be controlled in her actions
The project is one trick pony with most of the pictures being very very similar, this is a mess. It strikes me as the self-indulgence of a parent, showing off anything there child does. I would have enjoyed it more if was a series portraits of different mums (or dads) with the face painted by their own child.
Seven Years (2001-4)
In this series, Morrissey and her sister assume the characters of a variety of fictitious family scene, from the 1970s and 80s, to say something about the generalities of family life.
Extract from the artist’s statement,
They assume different characters and roles in each image, utilizing body language to reveal the subtext of psychological tensions inherent in all family relations. The resulting photographs isolate telling moments in which the unconscious leaks out from behind the façade of the face and into the minute gestures of the body.
The images produced are familiar to anyone who has a family album covering that period – stilted, posed pictures and typical clothes and hairstyles. I actually enjoy this series more from a pure nostalgic point of view.
Together these projects show that Morrissey is a performer as much as a photographer. She has to convincingly act the part of the person she is pretending to be, in order for the fantasy to work.
Even though I want to push my comfort zone I cannot say that this type of self-portraiture I would try to emulate.
References
Trishmorrissey.com. (2018). Trish Morrissey. [online] Available at: http://www.trishmorrissey.com/works_pages/work-sy/workpg-09.html [Accessed 7 Oct. 2018].