FORGOTTEN NOT GONE

This suite of 12 mixed-media collage works is built from fragments recovered from Have You Ever Loved Me?, an earlier related work that was largely destroyed in a flood.

Have You Ever Loved Me? explored a politician’s on-camera suicide, driven by the perceived betrayal of the journalists who had followed his career. The work was interwoven with reflections on love’s many betrayals.

Drawing on these recovered fragments, Forgotten Not Gone emerges as a wholly new body of work, tracing a more intimate narrative of betrayal.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My work spans a variety of media, guided by conceptual concerns. Projects typically begin with layered, complex drawings; at times—as with Forgotten Not Gone—these foundational works evolve into concise, independent pieces.

Materiality is essential, tethering the work to the physical world. Yet it is the gaps between images, objects, and projections—the synapses—that allow the work to breathe. Drawn to this frisson, I explore the fluid mutability of components and narrative structures.

The imagery often feels casual, like scrapings of unattended thought. It pivots through unintentional puns, offering glimpses between sense and nonsense.

Since moving to Vermont in 1998, local imagery and sound—bonfires, spring peepers, sap pinging in metal buckets, woodpeckers and chainsaws, ice, abandoned houses, and the materials left behind—have entered the vocabulary of my work.

Although the work may present in a particular voice, it is received, interpreted, and ultimately transformed by the viewer. Each piece is “tuned” in situ. However abstract the conceptual framework may be, its first impact is emotional.

These romantic precepts continue to inform the body of my work.

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY

Joey Morgan has developed public artworks and multidisciplinary installations presented in site-specific contexts and gallery exhibitions across the United States, Australia, Denmark, France, and Canada.

She represented Canada in the Sydney Biennial and 96 Containers in Copenhagen.

Her work has been exhibited at venues including Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, France; Passerelle in Brest, France; the National Gallery of Canada; The Power Plant in Toronto; the Musée d’art contemporain in Montréal; the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff; the Vancouver Art Gallery; and the Brattleboro Museum in Vermont.

Her site-specific installations have occupied a range of unconventional spaces, including a derelict warehouse, the entire unoccupied 31st floor of an office tower, and the area beneath Jericho Wharf in Vancouver.

Morgan has been awarded artist residencies at the Cité des Arts in Paris; Oud Amelisweerd in the Netherlands; Strokestown House in Ireland; and Studio PASS in New York. Parallel bookworks and other editioned materials have been published in conjunction with major projects.

She has presented lectures and workshops at universities and art schools including Bauhaus University in Weimar; Academie voor Kunst en Industrie (AKI) in Enschede and Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; NSCAD University in Nova Scotia; and Emily Carr University in Vancouver.

She lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, and maintains a studio at HatchSpace.

The Next Stage Gallery is open during events, and by appointment with the artist or by contacting Next Stage at info@nextstagearts.org or (802) 387-0102.