Tehachepi (sic)

Despite their often wildly different styles and subject matter, the Tehachepi (sic) series of paintings by Ivan Morley apparently have their roots in one shared story: a Tehachapi Indian family subsisting on the income derived from bullets salvaged from trees. As with other Morley series, the relationship between the works and their mythological origin can often be obscure, especially given the way the artist’s work oscillates between the abstract and the surreally figurative. However, it is this bridging the gap between abstraction and figuration itself that seems to fascinate Morley, not only across series of paintings but within the works themselves. In this Tehachepi (sic), Morley covers his aluminium panel with somewhat mysterious organic forms, rendering them in pastel blues, pinks and oranges, deep reds and darker browns and greens; these oddly-coloured and uneven circles sometimes seem to resemble mushrooms, berries or fruits, yet ultimately they evade definite interpretation. Flickering between the representational and non-representational, the piece playfully exploits our desire to read meaning into the visual material of a painting.