Reapers IV–VIII comprised five monumental, site-specific sculptures installed across the gardens and woodland of Orleans House Gallery. They formed the second iteration of the series developed through Morison’s research residency Towards the Weird Heart of Things.

The sculptures changed radically between the two locations. At the Sainsbury Centre, Reapers I–III had been broad, sturdy hayrick-like stacks positioned across open parkland. At Orleans House Gallery, the new works rose to approximately seven metres, becoming thinner and markedly more animated. They reached upwards, creating an open, irregular rhythm across the site.

This transformation arose from a change in material as well as location. Haylage is grass cut and gathered while still containing moisture, allowing it to ferment as a high-protein cattle feed. Denser, heavier and more pliable than dry straw, it was gathered around tall armatures made from timber coppiced within the gallery grounds. The resulting structures were elongated and precarious rather than stable and massed.

The sculptures were developed directly on site and at full scale. Their final postures were not predetermined through detailed drawings or models, but emerged through the physical process of construction. Decisions about balance, height, gesture and line were made as the works rose.

The energy of the local workforce had a direct effect upon this process. Their physical knowledge, confidence and willingness to improvise entered the sculptures, producing forms that felt more spontaneous, stretched and alive. Collective labour was not simply a means of delivering the work, but part of how its formal language developed.

The research with farmers remained embedded within the series. The Reapers had developed through visits to East Anglian farms, conversations with growers and reciprocal life-drawing sessions between artists and farmers. This research examined the rural as a radical space and drew parallels between artistic and agricultural practice, both shaped by ecological pressures, distorted markets and the search for alternative ways of working.

Reapers IV–VIII were presented within Cultural Reforesting, a programme bringing together the work and research of eighteen artists around the question, “How can we renew our relationship with nature?” The sculptures approached this question through material, labour and change rather than through direct representation.

Exposed to weather and biological activity, the works fermented, dried, darkened and loosened. Their structures would gradually weaken and their materials eventually return to the ground. These changes were not understood as damage to completed objects, but as a continuation of the sculptures through other processes.

The Orleans iteration demonstrated that the Reapers were not a fixed sculptural type, but an evolving family of forms. Each location, material and group of makers could generate a different formal response. What continued across the series was a method founded upon situated research, collective making, material transformation and ecological time.

       


“I am looking for things to hand, trying to shorten the journey from material to artwork, trying to take out industrialised processes where possible. In this situation, with the Reapers series, making perhaps the most basic of sculptural forms: the pile or mound of stuff.

“And trying to do this in a joyful, shared way, like we used to do as kids, playing and making in an unselfconscious way. Trying to create works that, through their weird energies, reconnect us to ourselves and our environment. That’s art at its most basic. Art as an action to be acted upon, not art as an unchanging object.”

Ivan Morison, 2025

Photographers’ credits       


Installation images_Ivan Morison