Helen Morgan

Helen Morgan is a Sydney-based artist with an experimental practice, combining printmaking, photography and installation. Morgan completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2018) and Master of Fine Arts (2021) in printmaking at the National Art School, where she was the recipient of the Jenour Foundation Fine Arts MFA Scholarship and the Mark Henry Cain Memorial Travel Scholarship in 2018. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows at Gallery Lane Cove (2023) and Airspace Projects (2022) and in group shows including Emanate! New England Regional Art Museum, Edition Three, Bankstown Arts Centre, Misprint, Gaffa Gallery, Photo+graphy, Interlude Gallery. Morgan was the Artist in Residence (Visual Arts) for Sydney Catholic Schools in 2022 and has recently completed a nine-month residency at Gallery Lane Cove with her recent solo exhibition Makeshift Arrangements, curated by Kelly McDonald.

19 | Helen Morgan, Makeshift Composition IX (Geometric Dream), 2023, unique state aquatint on handmade Japanese gampi paper, 103 x 97 x 6 cm. NFS.

Makeshift Composition IX is part of an ongoing series that explores the aesthetics of makeshift architecture through a language of abstraction. It draws on memories of my family home: a house transformed over the course of a century through use and adaptation, improvised repairs and self-built extensions, coming to be a unique and idiosyncratic structure. These prints were created with an intuitive, non-traditional use of etching, using abstraction to express moments of the endless combinations of materials, forms, and colours of the house. In its three-dimensional presentation, geometric shapes float and intermingle, expressing the complex beauty found within the everyday.