Visits throughout the exhibition are welcome by appointment:
Thursday 10am - 3pm
Friday 10am - 3pm
Saturday 10am - 1pm

We are delighted to welcome Trish Morrissey, now represented by CLOSE. To honour this we will present her first solo show at our gallery in Somerset. The exhibition will feature her photographic and filmic work, following on from her acclaimed survey exhibition ‘Autofictions’, at Photo Museum Ireland; Impressions Gallery, Bradford; and Serlachius Museum, Finland. 

Morrissey was born in Dublin, Ireland and lives and works in Somerset. Her practice combines performance, photography, and film. She uses a process of archival research as well as her own biography in order to develop and play real and fictional characters. The work explores the roles of women, the family and the body. Morrissey’s distinctive motif is herself; she appears in all her photographs and films, playing contemporary and historical characters with whom she identifies, thus creating a kind of 'autofiction' whereby experiences from her own life are explored through the stories of others. 

Morrissey’s work is deeply sensitive and offers a subtle dialogue around first-hand experiences throughout the milestones of growing up, noting stories told or interpreted through family photographs and histories both past, present and ongoing. There is a quirky humour edging on squeamish subject matter which creates a sense of tension and suspension within the work. Here we see an artist collaborating with family and communities to produce an inclusive whole experience. She achieves this through astute observations of human behaviour and attention to detail, a precise master of composition, she interprets and sets theatrical dramatic scenarios for us to decode. 

Curator and owner of CLOSE, Freeny Yianni, will feature a range of Morrissey's work including the iconic series ‘The Failed Realist’ and ‘The Successful Realist’ which take their name from the work of psychologist Georges-Henri Luquet. In the two series Morrissey invites her daughter, first at age five to paint characters directly onto her face. The series is later revisited (The Successful Realist) when her daughter was eleven and her fine motor skills had significantly improved. Kate Best writes of these works, “Upending convention, the artist/mother becomes the child’s canvas/plaything, visualising the Freudian notion of the domestic as a scene of pleasure and terror and the importance of play in psychoanalytical terms through a monstrous painterly masquerade.” 

Works will be available to purchase - please see our website for details - and there will also be the opportunity to delve deeper into Morrissey's work with the fully-illustrated ‘Autofictions’ catalogue, featuring texts in English and Finnish. The publication includes a conversation between Morrissey and art historian Lucy Soutter, an introductory essay by curator Kate Best, (quoted earlier in this text) and an essay on Morrissey's film work by Josephine Lanyon. 

Morrissey’s recent exhibition ‘Autofictions: Twenty Years of Photography and Film’ received a five star review in The Irish Times with their reporter writing, "Trish Morrissey may not yet be a household name, but this new exhibition ...demonstrates why she should be." ‘Autofictions’ was also in The Guardian’s top 10 photographic exhibitions of 2023. We hope you will be able to visit the show here at CLOSE whilst we have the privilege of showing a selection of her work to Somerset audiences and beyond.