Tim Morris
Riding Pillion with Ballard
Private view: Thursday 3 May 2012, 6 to 8pm
Exhibition continues until Saturday 26 May 2012.
Riding Pillion with Ballard sees Mayo-based sculptor Tim Morris present quasi-science fictional visual representations of future roadside memorials dedicated to the memories of road traffic accidents. There are 26 unique works in the series, one for each of the 26 counties. Each one is a futuristic imagining of a roadside memorial as Morris believes they may have been envisioned by the writer J.G. Ballard (1930-2009) on a fictive motorcycle journey in which he rides as a pillion passenger on Ballard's motorbike. The Memorials are numbered according to the system used on the registration plates of motorised road vehicles nationwide.
Although set in the future, the sculptural works clearly reference the roadside memorial monuments that have become almost as important to the contemporary landscape (or at least as common) as the houses, sheds and other man-made constructions that also inhabit it. In a sense Riding Pillion with Ballard depicts a rural landscape, albeit one that has yet to exist and is rendered in exquisitely cast and painted phosphor bronze.