Mali Morris: Contre-Jour

About the artist

Mali Morris RA b.1945 North Wales.

Lives and works in London.

Mali Morris studied Fine Art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (BA) and the University of Reading (MFA) during the 1960s.  Her abstract paintings explore how colour can construct luminosity, building complex layers of rhythmic pictorial space; she investigates the language of painting, its ever-changing expressive possibilities, and how it could relate to our experience in the world

Her first major solo exhibitions were at the Serpentine Summer Show 3, London, 1977, and the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1979. She has shown extensively since then in over forty solo shows, and in many group exhibitions: John Moores at the Walker in Liverpool, in London at the Whitechapel Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Hayward Gallery, and the Barbican, as well as a number overseas.

Her 33 Banners, commissioned by the Royal Academy and Art in Mayfair, hung above Bond Street in 2022 and many are now donated to Maggies Centres and the Ikon Gallery Birmingham.

Public Collections include:  Arts Council England, British Council, Contemporary Arts Society, Fitzwilliam Cambridge, Government Art Collection, Pallant House, Royal Collection, Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester, and Museum of Wales Cardiff.

In 2013 Morris began to make prints with Kip, and was fascinated by the parallels with, and differences between, the way paintings and prints are constructed. They have collaborated annually since then, in a rich and productive investigation into how a painter might negotiate this translation into another medium.