Preview: The Viral Sublime

Thursday 15th June 2017
Preview : Suzi Morris 'The Viral Sublime'. University of East London Professional Doctorate Showcase
Private View 6-9pm
Other artists in the University degree show: Jake Abrams, Carmen Aleman, Sophie Barr, Will Bishop-Stephens, Mary Crenshaw,Anna Fairchild, Mikey Georgeson, Christian Groothuizen, Dong Hwan-Ko, Be a Haut,Natalia Jezova, Andrew Moller, Hwa Son Yang, Dimitrios Oikonomou, Lucy Renton, Sue Withers and Ching Yi Lin.

Morris has increasingly come to understand to varying degrees, that her paintings are the result of a process of embodying her imagination’s relationship with what she experiences within her body. The Viral Sublime and the Bodily Experience of Painting, the title of her project, embodies her imaginative relationship with being in the world knowing that her body is shared with an unwanted virus that affects her vision. The various forms that a virus can adopt through disembodiment feed into her practice. Her painting takes the form of viral landscapes in which oil paint is treated as having some characteristics inherent to viruses, in the ways in which oil paint behaves on a substrate. Subsequently, the viral characteristics of invisibility, the intangible, the unknown, and the ability to replicate and mutate, engender an imaginary relationship with this microorganism, which seeps into her practice through paint(ing).

Meeting with scientists and managing the medical intervention necessary, virology and genomics have become sources of inspiration in relation to the regenerative potential of the Sublime. As genomics opens the doors to personalised medicine, one of her objectives is to expand the dialogue between science, medicine and art to initiate change in society’s perceptions of disease, particularly viruses.

The exhibition will showcase over twenty fine artists undertaking the practice-based professional doctorate at University of East London THE ARTS AND DIGITAL INDUSTRIES BUILDING, DOCKLANDS CAMPUS, UNIVERSITY WAY, LONDON E16 2RD