HEATHER_IVAN
PEAK_MORISON
Silence.
Stable.
Strong.
Symmetrical.
Shifted.
Stretched.
Slumped.
This is how to get to know Heather and Ivan*
Artists Heather Peak and Ivan Morison have established an important collaborative practice spanning sculpture, film, performance and social practice. Together, they have created a body of work in which materials, places and bodies meet.
Based in the UK and working internationally, they develop permanent and temporary public art commissions for cultural organisations, local authorities and private clients, alongside works for gallery exhibition and collection. Working closely with communities, the practice brings people, sculpture and landscape together within the public realm.
Their projects are often site-specific and take the form of pavilions, social projects and large-scale installations. They are known particularly for architectural works concerned with escape, play and refuge, and with the ways civic communities form and function.
Based in the UK and working internationally, they develop permanent and temporary public art commissions for cultural organisations, local authorities and private clients, alongside works for gallery exhibition and collection. Working closely with communities, the practice brings people, sculpture and landscape together within the public realm.
Their projects are often site-specific and take the form of pavilions, social projects and large-scale installations. They are known particularly for architectural works concerned with escape, play and refuge, and with the ways civic communities form and function.
The practice is grounded in material experimentation, social encounter and long-term collaboration. Works often begin with a situation that brings people, places and materials into relation. Through collective labour, sculptural forms emerge, carrying within them the traces of their own production.
Across the work, certain concerns recur: how bodies hold space; how materials grow, weather and decay; how acts of care and participation can become part of an artwork; and how sculpture might operate as a patient civic tool. The violence of change, whether personal, material or societal, sits at the heart of the practice.
They describe their work as a situated practice constructed from layers of social sculpture and sculptural space.
Across the work, certain concerns recur: how bodies hold space; how materials grow, weather and decay; how acts of care and participation can become part of an artwork; and how sculpture might operate as a patient civic tool. The violence of change, whether personal, material or societal, sits at the heart of the practice.
They describe their work as a situated practice constructed from layers of social sculpture and sculptural space.
Today, their collaboration continues as a shared ground for thinking and making, while each also develops independently authored work. Heather’s practice extends through her role as Artistic Director and CEO of DASH, where she engages with questions of access, care and organisational change. Ivan’s work builds upon their shared history through projects concerned with embodiment, queer relationality, rural and civic space, material transformation and ecological time.
* This website explores these aspects through a poetic and visual essay with words by Gavin Wade, taken from his essay ‘Living With the Morisons’. For people who require more tangible detail the researchers archive provides a chronological catalogue of selected works, exhibitions, texts and images.
* This website explores these aspects through a poetic and visual essay with words by Gavin Wade, taken from his essay ‘Living With the Morisons’. For people who require more tangible detail the researchers archive provides a chronological catalogue of selected works, exhibitions, texts and images.
Heather and Ivan go looking for a crystal.
A meteorite.
A spaceship.
A message from beyond.
It has a hidden weight to it.
Filling my palm.
A code that I need.
It’s not the owning of art
that makes it valuable.
It’s the using of art.
that makes it valuable.
It’s the using of art.
Living with art.
Growing with art.
Thinking with art.
Feeling with art.
Loving with art.
Dying with art.
