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Julia Morison ONZM – Inducted 2019
Friday, 1 November 2019
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This award recognises Julia Morison’s contribution to New Zealand art a visual artist for more than 40 years. Using a wide variety of media, her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Leaving school at the end of 1969 Julia completed a Diploma of Graphic Design at Wellington’s Polytechnic (now Massey University) , and followed this with an Honours degree in Fine Art from Canterbury University. She was awarded the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship in 1988 and the Moet & Chandon residency in France in 1990 where she continued to work for the next 10 years. When she returned to New Zealand, she became Senior Lecturer in Painting at the University of Canterbury. Julia Morison’s work has been exhibited widely, one of the most notable being a survey exhibition of work entitled, A loop around a loop. Her work includes photography, sculpture, public installations and more formal paintings. The School Art collection includes one of her original works and her “Material Evidence” exhibition in 1998 was used by our senior art students as inspiration for their folios. Although Julia researches her work carefully and she is well known for her use of symbols and patterns, her work is often a response to the world around her. More recently, partly as a result of the Christchurch earthquake which damaged her studio and the quantity of “found’ materials on the streets and junk yards, she produced an exhibition entitled Meet Me on the other side. Her public installations include Tree House for Swamp Dwellers in central Christchurch. “I’m really just much more responsive to what happens. All the brilliant things that have happened in my life have been beyond my plans. I wonder, if you do have these rigid plans, then maybe you don’t see what possibilities there are ?”[i] [i] The artist. Cover story, Sunday Star Times . 2007 |