THE CURSE OF EXILE WITHIN THE LIMITS OF A LANDSCAPE

The Curse of Exile Within the Limits of a Particular Landscape

Gavin Morrison’s Bound Curation of Napoleonic Foodstuffs, Judd in Iceland, and Discarded Photographs.

BY BRANDON KENNEDY

Quite often we are told something about a stranger before we meet them in the flesh. Rarer to be told about the stories that they will tell when we become acquaintances. Ever the finer beat are we then friends and interminably waiting for them to finish their story or quest so that it may be published and then we can read it and share it with others. Writer and curator Gavin Morrison is no exception to this rule of threes.

Raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, Morrison left straight out of high school to try his footing at rock climbing in the South of France, as one does. He later returned to attend the University of Stirling, then on to Edinburgh to get his MA in mental philosophy with a focus on epistemology and phenomenology. Once you get a sense of his scrambling-about curiosity and conceptual gymnastics, this certain avenue makes perfect sense. Naturally, it also would follow suit that he doesn’t take part in our car commutes and rather insists on long, rural bicycle-riding routes.

All traveling Scotsman asides, Morrison is an ardent follower of proverbial rabbits and their juxtaposed holes. Usually tracing the arc of a larger-than-life personality—typically a hubristic male— caught in some form of expulsion (self or forced), set against a stark landscape whilst trying to both reclaim history through an understanding of its recorded stories and yet also obliterate it by implementing a perverse sense of dramatic staging and obsessivecompulsive behaviors.

Minimalist Donald Judd first came to Marfa, Texas in 1971. Leaving New York mid-decade and settled down south by the close. Judd ventured to Iceland initially seeking solace and the possibilities there in the early ’80s. According to Morrison, Judd also had a deep affinity for the Sagas of Icelanders: heroic, historic narratives that date to the 9th through early 12th centuries. These familial tales also described the landscape in simple terms.

Vernacular architecture was another aspect of Judd’s newfound interest abroad, and he was working with an Icelandic photographer to document the structures set in the primal landscape with hopes of mounting an exhibition in the future. “Architecture, land, literature,” Morrison states simply. He then goes on to describe a heroic farce of a scene in which Judd is on a boat up north in the fjords and orders everyone else to go below deck so that he may ponder the panorama at the bow all alone.

During his time visiting Iceland and exhibiting art there in the ’80s and ’90s, Judd befriended artist Ingólfur Arnarsson, eventually inviting him for an artist residency and a permanent installation at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa in 1992. Morrison and Arnarsson met in 2001 and became friends, and the looping starts to knot as

the author locates a new thread. Morrison initially wrote an essay about Judd’s time in Iceland for the Chinati Foundation magazine in 2018 and will weave together chapters as standalone essays regarding “Judd in Iceland” for a book from the Swiss publisher Lars Müller in the near future.

When embarking on his first visit to Texas in 2001, Morrison did a stopover in Iceland at the suggestion of his friend, Edinburgh artist Alan Johnston. Morrison was on his way to a yearlong fellowship at the Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art, part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 2007, he returned to Texas for a curator position with TCU’s Fort Worth Contemporary Arts and produced a number of stellar exhibitions there. From 20182020, Morrison was the director of Skaftfell – Center for Visual Art in East Iceland, where he had curated some shows in the two years previous as an artistic director. During his time in Seyðisfjörður, Morrison learned of Swiss artist Dieter Roth’s influence living there during his last decade of life. Morrison is also currently working on an oral history, framed as a dual portrait of the famed eccentric artist and his unlikely adopted home, told by its inhabitants and brought to life through Roth’s art and bookmaking and absurd yet sincere gestures.

Morrison and his longtime friend, artist/educator Fraser Stables started Atopia Projects over two decades ago with aims to produce curated exhibitions and publications that function as a type of a nonspace, occurring periodically, with unforeseen future collaborations and locations. On this the venture delivers handily with thoughtprovoking exhibitions like American Dirt at The Reading Room (2016), a selection of found photographs by TCU professor of cultural criminology and dumpster diver Jeff Ferrell. Six years later the collaborators reconvened to produce an exquisite and poignant artist’s book of found photography entitled Last Picture.

Looming large behind the framing of Morrison’s current projects—in these pages quite literally—is the shadow of the exiled emperor, Napoleon. With an article in the local paper a few years ago, the writer piqued interest in the robed portrait of the famous Frenchman by his court painter, François Gérard, located in the City Hall Bar Room of the Adolphus Hotel. Additionally, as part of The Salon Series at the French Room just adjacent—and curated by Lucia Simek—Morrison charted out the culinary exploits and inventions riding alongside “The Little Corporal,” mapping legends and exaggerations alike, from the etymology of pumpernickel bread to the invention of food rations that could travel to the front lines without spoiling.

Tellingly, Morrison once recounted a story of Napoleon “using food as a means to avoid certain social situations, sometimes even tipping dishes over onto people.” Feeling caught, the emperor is now able to flee elsewhere, free of expectations while upending social codes. As a nod to the sprawling Alexandre Dumas’ Dictionary of Cuisine, Morrison hopes to illuminate tales both true and tall whilst with many amuse-bouche in the form of accompanying drawings by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson in a yet another forthcoming publication.

At the end of the journey, one can only hope to have stories told about a deposed emperor twice exiled whose horse perhaps had something to do with the naming of a rather divisive, slightly sweet rye bread found mainly in Germany. Or was it that the pattern or coloration of vegetables planted in the garden plot tended by the man himself hinted at a plan for escape from the island of exile just north of his native Corsica? Either or neither way around, Morrison states that he’s always attuned to “stories slightly outside of the main narrative that illuminate another history, perhaps even an apocryphal one.” Sounds like a recipe for a future publication. P

DJ-Þjóðveldisbærinn. Donald Judd at Þjóðveldisbærinn i Þjórsárdalur. Image courtesy of Pétur Arason and Ragna Róbertsdóttir.

Warhol and the Shared Subject. Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, TCU. December 2008 – February 2009. Andy Warhol, Rineke Dijkstra, Douglas Gordon, C.S. Leigh, and Tony Scherman.