Harun Morrison (UK associate) spans various media in his practice including text, video, sound and spatial design. His ongoing interest in the shifting potentials of civic space is informed by being a boater, which in turn prompts questions about land ownership in relation to itinerancy, and the degree to which living on water affects one’s relationship with the environment and state infrastructure (notably sewage, administrative systems and the National Grid).
As a UK associate artist for Collecting as Practice, in partnership with the Horniman Museum and Gardens, Harun will consider the politics of the museum’s collection and deaccession. Deploying the rhetorical device prosopopoeia, in which a speaker communicates to an audience by speaking as another person or object, he will construct critical-fabulations through which the collection ‘speaks back’.
In 2006, alongside Helen Walker, Harun co-founded collective practice They Are Here. Recent commissions include I’ll Bring You Flowers (2019), Survival Kit 10, Riga, and Laughing Matter (2018) at Studio Voltaire co-commissioned by Block Universe, which saw the gallery converted into a comedy club. The performance 40 Temps, 8 Days (2017) at Tate Modern highlighted the use of temp labour at the institution in the context of the wider gig-economy.
Harun is a former artist-in-residence with Arts Catalyst, Furtherfield, IASPIS and Botyrka Konsthall. He has also been a visiting artist at various universities and is Associate Faculty for the studio program Conditions, in Croydon. In recent years Morrison has co-designed a number of community gardens, including the conversion of a car park in Dagenham, East London on the Beacontree Estate, and Bootle Library in Liverpool, commissioned by Rule of Threes. In 2021, his work will be shown at the Dakar Biennial, Senegal, and Eastside Projects in Birmingham. His forthcoming novel, The Escape Artist, will be published by Book Works in 2022. Since 2019, he has been a trustee of the Black Cultural Archive.
Harun Morrision was born in London and currently navigates the UK Inland Waterways.
THEMATIC PROGRAMME
Collecting as Practice:
Season 3 & Season 4
RESIDENCY SEASON
In partnership with
Horniman Museum and Gardens
Tags
Please note all artist-in-residence biographies are accurate at the time of their residency. For up-to-date bios please visit the artist’s website.