As the creative team behind Studio Morison are nominated for a Dezeen Award for their work Silence Alone in a World of Wounds at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Bethan Andrews chats to one half of the duo about all things art, nature and connection
Despite the huge success Studio Morison has seen, having grown up in a working class background, Heather Peak didn’t necessarily expect to be able to make a career out of being an artist. “I found out about art through my local library and looking at a lot of David Hockney, which is very relevant to Yorkshire,” she tells me. “I then ended up picking up a catalogue from a show by an artist called Helen Chadwick. She’d done a printmaking degree at Brighton, so I thought I’ll give that a go. That’s where I met Ivan who was doing fine art, but it was still a bit of a preposterous idea just leaving college and being an artist. You needed to have connections, an understanding of the art world and some financial stability – and I didn’t have any of those things.”
Heather and Ivan went to London and got intern jobs in the art world, and she tells me how the late nineties in London was an extraordinary time for contemporary art. Heather explains how Ivan got a job working for Frieze Magazine and how she worked for the art newspaper, and it meant that they had invites to amazing art events such as Sensations. She credits this with giving them both an amazing apprenticeship in art and meeting incredible artists. Fast forward to today, and now married with two children, the two have managed to work for 20 years exclusively as successful, professional artists.
So, how did Studio Morison first come about and what is the main ethos? “I think we played around with all kinds of ways of being an artist in the world, but having a studio means that it gives you a nice framework for working with all kinds of people,” says Heather. “As time has gone on, we’ve expanded our experience and range of things that we have done. Every piece of work is completely bespoke and never been done before.” As artists, they have established an ambitious collaborative practice that transcends traditional divisions between art, architecture, theatre and activism. Their art is often performance-based and site-specific, existing as one-off events, social projects, or large-scale installations and buildings in public spaces.
It’s not surprising, then, that Studio Morison have been in conversation with the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for nearly 15 years. “We’ve got to know them, and they’ve got to know us, and you build up a lot of trust in that time,” says Heather. Clearly, this was a match made in heaven, and Studio Morison’s first artwork for the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Silence Alone in a World of Wounds, has recently been nominated for a Dezeen Award.
The project came about in the pandemic, where Heather talks of the real emotional shift that everyone had in that time. The work mirrors this, as it is incredibly in touch with nature and it’s calming, comforting and tender, but it’s also about seeing the harsh truth in our surroundings, too. Responding to the question ‘Can art save us from extinction?’, Studio Morison developed a sculptural space made of natural materials including timber and thatch. It acts as an extended open pavilion and becomes a framework and quiet space set within nature. The artwork invites visitors to stop and connect, to consider and experience and to listen to their natural surroundings. Over time, the work will become part of the landscape as the natural weather contributes to its decomposition, leaving only a slight indent and trace of a ring in the ground in years to come.
This connection between nature, art and humans is central to Studio Morison as artists. Heather tells me how privileged they were to have the chance to stay the night at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and immerse themselves in nature to understand that connection and how they wanted it to come across to the public. “Working in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park is an extraordinary privilege. I stayed up all night with my kids and wandered around, and it was magic,” she beams. “Where you see where Silence is, we laid down there for hours at night to understand it that closely. The work is built entirely from materials found in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park or from our land at home.”
We talk about how cleverly Studio Morison bridges the gap between art and architecture, and Heather explains exactly how that has evolved. “I like art that you can step into, that you go over a threshold and that is almost portal-like, so that’s thematic throughout our work,” she says. “To get that, you have to combine architecture and the art world.” It’s this that allows a sense of connection and full immersion in their work, so it’s not a surprise that this is Heather’s answer when I ask what she hopes people take away from Silence Alone in a World of Wounds. “Connection, definitely,” she smiles. “Connection to us, connection to the earth and connection to the weather.”
It turns out that Heather feels pretty connected to Yorkshire, too. “There’s a narrative sometimes that art is a bit of an add-on in life, but it’s actually integral to being a human,” she says. “This idea is never questioned at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and it doesn’t happen everywhere else in the country, so I love that about working there. Yorkshire is really beautiful, too, and it’s so beautifully looked after as well.”
I wonder what Heather feels is most important to them about creating art, in general. “It’s actually really simple, I think, and it’s about creating art for public good – there’s no two ways about that,” she smiles. “I’m working on something at the moment that I can’t say too much about, but it’s looking at some of the philanthropists from the 18th century who built our libraries, town halls, art galleries and museums. They had at the heart of everything that they did work for public good – I like the simplicity of that.”
