ELEANOR MORETON
ELEANOR MORETON
DWELLING, BEING, CLEARING
TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY
14 APRIL — 28 MAY 2023
DWELLING, BEING, CLEARING
This body of work echoes ideas from renowned German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s masterpiece monograph: Being and Time.
Moreton writes "The family is back in the wood, its members are going about their tasks. It's a winter wood, so less accommodating and more reflective. It is a family like my own birth family, with a son and a daughter, of a similar era to my own. My sources were illustrations of family life and childhood from that time, illustrations which informed my own childhood and which reflect this need for order, conformity and security. The painting titles are both nouns and verbs: Dwelling, Being, Clearing, Building, reflecting Heidegger's ideas about the intrinsic 'making' nature of human beings."
Being and Time (1927), he expounds on how mankind often dodges the existential challenge of being true to our being in the world. Heidegger and Moreton comment on this authentic way of being through the act of making. In each of Moreton’s paintings titled “Dwelling”, “Building”, “Clearing”, and “Being”- Moreton’s work depicts figures experiencing the world in full color and texture. These titles speak to the Heidegger’s main point that being is inseparable from time and the world we exist within.
In the wake of the global catastrophe of World War I, Heidegger rethinks the origins of culture and philosophy by emphasizing our thrownness in the world and how to authentically respond to the situations we find ourselves thrown into. In his most famous writing,
It is a family like my own birth family, with a son and a daughter, of a similar era to my own. My sources were illustrations of family life and childhood from that time, illustrations which informed my own childhood and which reflect this need for order, conformity and security.
In Dwelling the girl reaches for a Wood Anemone, the Windflower which appears in spring. Animated by
2
spring winds, it takes its name from the word 'anima', Latin for 'soul'. Anima is also, in Jungian psychology, the unconscious feminine. In both Being and Pupae the children handle an over-sized chrysalis, the mysterious transitional developmental stage between caterpillar and butterfly. In the last Hibernia painting, Gathering, we have moved on a decade and the buildings are now established. The children have grown. The butterflies have emerged. “This is my generation and this image, from the Windsor Free Festival in 1974, reminds me both of that festival and also of my friends at the time.”
“This is my generation and this image, from the Windsor Free Festival in 1974, reminds mebothofthatfestivalandalsoofmyfriends at the time.”
interpretations of philosophy, literature, European history, and psychoanalysis. She is particularly drawn to fairytales and the fictions we create about ourselves individually and collectively. “My work is very closely connected to my inner life,” she says.
“My characters precariously inhabit a world on the edge of the woods, on the edge of their own animal,wild selves and on the edge of the more unruly aspects of their minds"
Moreton’s dark figurative paintings are just as easily read as psychological meditations as they are florid
Unsettling and dreamlike, she builds fantastic fairy worlds peppered with fabled drama. With the richness of an old world tapestry, her world comes alive on canvas-- weasels bound, ravens lurk, children wander. There is an unmistakable childlike wonder to her brush, underscored by a deeply intellectual longing for something that goes beyond the literal into the literary. “My characters precariously inhabit a world on the edge of the woods, on the edge of their own animal, wild selves and on the edge of the more unruly
4
aspects of their minds,” she says.
Eleanor Moreton studied painting at Exeter and Chelsea Colleges of Art, and Art History and Theory at UCE (University of Central England). Solo exhibitions include Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Wodewose, Arusha
Gallery, Edinburgh (2019), A Cold Wind From The Mountains, Exeter Phoenix, Exeter, (2017), Monro Room, The House of St Barnabas, London (2016), California Dreaming, Canal, London (2015), Tales of Love and Darkness (2014) and I See the Bones in the River (2012) at Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool and London, the Ladies of Shalott, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York (2012), and Im Wartezimmer, Ceri Hand Gallery, London (2010). Her work has been reviewed in Art Monthly, Art in America, and The Guardian. Her work can be seen in The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting by Matt Price, (Anomie, 2018) and Picturing People by Charlotte Mullins, (Thames and Hudson, 2015). She has participated in art fairs including Frieze Art Fair, London, Art Rotterdam, NADA Miami, The Armory Show, New York, VOLTA, Basel and Manchester Contemporary.
5
HIBERNIA - GATHERING, 2021
Oil on canvas
55 x 74 3/4 inches
6
HIBERNIA - BEING , 2021
8
Oil on canvas
55 x 743/4 inches
10
PUPAE , 2021
Oil on canvas
27 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches
12
WINDFLOWER, 2021
Oil on canvas
27 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches
14
THE BIG P, 2021
Oil on canvas
32 x 24 inches
16
COLOSSI , 2020
Oil on canvas
19 3/4 x 23 1/2 inches
HIBERNIA - BUILDING, 2021
Acrylic on paper
Framed dimensions, 24 1/2 x 31 inches
18
MEETING 2, 2021
Acrylic and crayon on paper
Framed dimensions 24 1/4 x 31 inches
20
HIBERNIA - BUILDING, 2021
Oil on canvas
55 x 74 3/4 inches
22
24
HIBERNIA - HOLE, 2021
Oil on canvas
32 x 28 inches
26
BALLAD 5, 2020
Oil on canvas
19 3/4 x 24 inches
28
EVENING, 2019
Oil on canvas
19 1/2 x 15 3/4 inches
30
DUNG 2, 2021
Oil on canvas
32 x 21 1/2 inches
32
DUNG, 2019
Oil on canvas
31 1/2 x 23 inches
HIBERNIA - DOORWAY, 2021
Oil on canvas
20 x 24 inches
34
HIBERNIA - WAYS, 2021
Oil on canvas
36
32 x 44 inches
HIBERNIA - CLEARING, 2021
Oil on canvas
24 x 32 inches
38
32 x 24 inches
40
HIBERNIA - BRIDGING, 2021
Oil on canvas
ELEANOR MORETON
Born in London, England in 1956
Lives and works in London
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023 Dwelling, Being, Clearing, Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, USA
EDUCATION
1999 MA Painting, Chelsea College of Art
1996 MA Art History and Theory, UCE
1979 BA Fine Art, Exeter College of Art
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022 Once Upon A Time, Chiltern St, London
2022 Cakes and Shapes, Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, USA
2016 House of St Barnabas, London
2015 Liberties, Collyer Bristow, London
2014 Strange Meeting, Canal, London
2013 Galerie Vidal-St Phalle, Paris, three person show
2011 Magnus Karlsson Gallery, Stockholm
2010 Frieze Art Fair, Jack Hanley, London
2008 The Painting Room, Transition Gallery, London
2008 These Living Walls of Jet, Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool
2007 Pranvere, National Gallery of Albania, Tirana
2021 WinterFlower, Arusha Gallery, London
2019 Wodewose, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh
2017 A Cold Wind From The Mountains, Exeter
2015 California Dreaming, Canal, London
2014 Tales of Love and Darkness, Ceri Hand Gallery, London
2012 I See the Bones in the River, Ceri Hand Gallery, London
2010 The Ladies of Shalott, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York
2010 Im Wartezimmer, Ceri Hand Gallery, London
1020 Im Wartezimmer, The Terrace Gallery, Harewood House, Leeds
2008 A Buried Life, Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland
RESIDENCIES, AWARDS AND COLLECTIONS
Government Art Collection
2009 Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Award
2007 Artist in Residence Durham Cathedral
42
62 SOUTH GLENWOOD STREET JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING TEL 307 733 0555 TAYLOEPIGGOTTGALLERY.COM