Michael Morley

Michael Morley's paintings attempted to recreate abstract utopian ideas as graphic symbols. These inevitably operated as failures; an acknowledgement of the elusive nature of utopia and the futility of attempting to recreate it conclusively and with any authority. Failures too because of painting's reliance on failure and disappointment in order to proceed through successive and repeated deaths. The history of post-industrial global culture is replete with examples of failed utopias.

Hallucinatory visions have been the source of these works, or remembered experiences now filtered through time. Combining a history of clinical psychology's interest in hallucination and the visual arts and the relationship between induced psychedelic experience and the experience of visualising utopias as well as the artist's own experience of visual impairment. Images of the retinal curve play havoc with night time vision resulting in blurry stellar and floral patterns, animated now but only as an afterthought.