Artist gets closer to the truth
A Taranaki artist is trying to unravel ‘‘the truth’’, one print at a time. Kicking off the summer arts season at Kina Gallery in New Plymouth, Roger Morris, or Remo, is presenting a political natured solo exhibition, titled In the Houses of Shadow, Everybody Lies.
The activist artist said the body of work was inspired by ‘‘the lies of our history’’.
He said the series of mono and woodblock prints, pertained to a declassified senate intelligence report on the CIA black sites.
‘‘This is what you get given as truth. Then they tell us you have to work our heads around that.’’
He said the artwork begged the question, what is truth and what is lies? It was a question he had pondered since ‘‘he woke up to it’’ following the September 11 attacks on the landmark Twin Towers in New York. The prints, constructed over the last year using handrubbed and roller and stencil methods, look at how reality is shaped and how people make sense of, or find truth behind local, national and global events that shape their thinking and view of the world, he said.
‘‘All my work relates to me getting used to a geopolitical history. And the manufactured lies and deceptions that have got us here.’’
Morris has worked on the prints, about 100 in total, for the past year. They are mainly black and white with some featuring splashes of colour. The images detail moments from history such as a sniper which relates to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the Twin Towers which explores the September 11 attacks.
‘‘They’re all my images and I’m trying to make my narrative rather than anybody elses.’’
Morris is renowned for addressing political or social issues through his artwork. It was a way for the artist to ‘‘figure it all out,’’ he said.
‘‘I feel like I’m getting closer to the truth, I reckon we all are. I reckon the internet has broken it wide open.’’
The exhibition begins on Friday, February 16 and will run until March 12.