Alice Morey:
on the obsolescence of ownership

Excerpts from an interview by Luz Hitters

August 2020

I first encountered Alice Morey’s work around a year ago in London. Like most exhibitions, it was a bit of a struggle to find the place. I finally landed in what looked like a garage on a side street in East London. As I entered the room, there was this young woman dressed in white, surrounded by hanging pheasants, which where intubated and attached to clay chains. She cooked on a white table, which matched the tones of the room. She used hand-made clay utensils and mixed everything in a massive pot. Jars full of unknown substances, as well as fresh vegetables that she had previously chopped up all lay scattered on the tabletop. I glanced down at the invitation I had previously received: the exhibition was called She Doesn’t Love, She Just Devours, and the performance was called PURE. I was not quite sure what the connection between the performance and the installation was, but I was amazed to see a crowd silently observing her cooking in the gallery, akin to a British version of Rirkrit Tiravanija. It wasn’t until she grabbed a silver tray neatly arranged with dead pheasants that the true undertones of her exhibition began to take shape. Silently, but in a quick and threatening way, the artist began plucking feathers and butchering the pheasant’s flesh. As she butchered, the clay utensils broke down and became tainted with blood. Her white clothes suffered the same fate. As Morey prepared and served the dish, the same people that scowled and shivered from watching her performance were eating from handmaid crockery, which became irreversibly stained by the potion she created. I was amazed by how tableware enhanced the dissociation with the dead animal.

Alice Morey (b. 1986, London) is based between London and Berlin, and lives an almost-nomadic lifestyle. She creates ‘temporary systems’ which she inhabits and works in to explore the concept of mutation. As such, her practise dovetails with her personal life. She changes her workspace constantly, making use of the resources each location offers. Flexibility and adaptability are a bastion of her work. 

Oftentimes, the artist coordinates collaborative projects, believing that a sense of community is not only motivating but also enhances discussions that are profitable for art. In some cases, such as her project, Countdown Grabowsee, an artistic community in Berlin, cohabitation plays a crucial part in the creation of installations and performance pieces. These projects intend to bring about social criticism, specifically focusing on gentrification and control mechanisms. 

Alice Morey, When the Stage Turns Dark Tomorrow (KUNSTHAUSLA 54, Berlin, 2019) © Gustav Kleinschmidt

“(Grabowsee) is about getting a group of people together in a huge space and creating a community through making site-specific artwork in this dilapidated building by a lake. We’ve built the infrastructure: a compost toilet, pizza oven, a kitchen in one of the old buildings. We camp there for a week and have materials that artists can use to create their artworks on-site. Every day we normally come up with a theme. I’ve been co-curating it for the last eight years. 

When the Stage Turns Dark Tomorrow (Das Haus in Landsberger Allee 54) was one of the last protests my partner did to fight for this space and for its politics. It has been disused for seven years since the artists were kicked out. It is a constant battle with the owners. It is rotting there, empty, but it was once a cultural hotspot for lots of artists.”

Her installations place heavy emphasis on the creative process behind them. Her objective is to transport the viewers into a parallel universe where they can let go of their preconceptions and consequently introspect. The end result incites reflection on current societal structures and future scenarios.

The artist is interested in the passage of time. She finds beauty in decay and contrasts it with pain. She has been juxtaposing natural and artificial materials for years in order to explore the concept of change. Her performative work could be compared to rituals, as she undertakes actions charged with symbolism in a ceremonial tone. She acts either as an alchemist or a contemporary witch who manipulates natural processes. The artist explores the creativity behind rituals and their role in the historical and cultural processes which underly our society. 

Morey’s performances show the inherent self-expression and collective memory behind societal shifts. She enhances the viewers’ experiences through all five senses. Her installations many times include rotting materials such as pigskin, and artificial smells such as that of plastic. As such, the reflection on personal memories spellbound viewers and make them become participants of the piece.

“I see my ‘rituals’ as a way of engaging the audience; for them to be part of certain questions that I want to convey. It has a lot to do with ethics, belief and collaboration.

Everything I do is about a process. It is a time-based piece, and as such, I perform these rituals live.  

It is also important for me to put the audience on the spot. To think about the role of nature (both life and death), and about how we seem to not be aware of the power we have with certain things like the food we consume. I like the idea of challenging the audience and making them question the roles of fragility and these ethical questions that play in the human psyche.”

The artist provocatively exposes the many faces of violence through her work. Her choice of materials, especially the ones that some of us consider repugnant, recalls Teresa Margolles’ art. In specific, her installation: What else could we talk about? (2009) at the 53th edition of the Venice Biennale reminds me of her work. Margolles directed the mopping of Palazzo Rota Ivancich’s floor with water and blood from victims of the 'war on drugs’ in Mexico (Limpieza, 2009). The objective is to reveal the consequences of drug trafficking, poverty, exploitation and political inequity. [1]  As such, Margolles uses bodily substances and corpses as raw materials to confrontationally uncover the repercussion of the conflict. By using a morgue as a studio, she explicitly challenges the taboo of death and denounces the consequences of violence.

Alice Morey displays an artistic arsenal of similarly displeasing materials. Apart from cooking a pheasant in a gallery and feeding visitors (Pure, 2019). She also tattooed, washed, and hung out pigskin to dry (Dirty Laundry, 2019), and made viewers walk on milk (When The Stage Turns Dark Tomorrow, 2019). Her aim is to push visitors’ boundaries of comfort and alter their perception of disgust. Accordingly, she confronts viewers with their own taboos and invites them to question their limitations. 

This exploration of violence is enhanced by the concept of femininity and its affliction. Some of Morey's distinctive symbols are porcelain chains attached to deflated breasts. They hang from ceilings and look extremely fragile. However, for Morey, this same femininity is also capable of brutality. For her aforementioned exhibition, She doesn't love, she just devours (2019), at the RYDER projects, she inverted the role of pheasants as male hunting trophies. She accomplished this through hanging their corpses on these clay chains and breasts. Furthermore, they are tubed to urine bags and attached to a simulated beating heart as well as a condom-like membrane composed of silk and pig intestines. Through creating this uncanny environment, Morey subverts the concepts of class and toxic masculinity. 

Alice Morey, She doesn't love, she just devours. The RYDER Projects (London, 2019) © Aina Pomar

When asked about her work, it is not too surprising that the artist chooses to quote Julia Kristeva's "Powers of Horror" to encapsulate her practice. In this book, Kristeva explores the concept of abjection in relation to feminism, bodily functions, and human reaction; all topics that Morey incorporates in her work. Yet, the more I get familiar with her art, the less I would dare to box it in.

Her practice is multifaceted, as she allows evershifting contexts to highlight the various aspects of her search. There is an underlying unification in her work. From my perspective, she does not believe in the concept of ownership, suggesting that possessions are related to use, be it long or short-term. For her, materials are in the eye of the beholder, and any environment can be the catalyst for a narrative. However, Morey's art could be defined as something more metaphysical: she tries to create peace in the chaos.

To conclude, I would like to highlight what strikes me the most about the symbolism behind the open-linked clay chains. Present in several of Morey’s pieces, they are a part of the artist’s language and act as a synthesis of her discourse. The bonds are created by carefully placing together each piece on-site. Every element can be separated and rearranged, varying in length and shape according to the installation. The chains can be argued to mirror communities, integrated by individuals that have a direct impact in one another. The stability of the structure is dependent on every piece being perfectly aligned, becoming more precarious the longer it gets With one slight movement, the whole chain collapses and shatters. With this, Morey exposes a worrying reality: it takes one element to break her whole creation. However, when witnessing the finished work, one becomes aware of the power of collaboration to create uniqueness. As such, she invites us to see our actions as part of a collective and to hope that the whole will be richer than the sum of the parts.

[1] Simona Pezzano, “Teresa Margolles at 53rd Venice Biennale,” accessed July 25, 2020, https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/38082/teresa-margolles-at-53rd-venice-biennale/.