Michele Morcos

Michele Morcos is a multimedia visual artist with a studio practice in Sydney, Australia. She graduated from UNSW Art & Design (Collage of Fine Arts) in 1999 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting/drawing) and a BA Honours in Art Theory.

In June 2023, Morcos will participate as an invited artist in the Open Fields art festival in Berry, NSW, alongside Clare Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Glenn Barkley, Soda Jerk, Donna Marcus, Wade Marynowsky and others. Her performative piece, Nocturne 528 : ONE, relates to her research on the Quantum Theories of The Universe, hypnotherapy and intuitive meditation ” – and how we can collectively heal and elevate our bodies, our thoughts and emotional states through the use of the 528 hz healing frequency, a positive mindset and intent, and a focus on the particles and granular energy that invisibly floats and carries information in the (a)ether around us” (artist statement).

Morcos has exhibited her work in eight solo exhibitions and over twenty group exhibitions throughout Australia. She has been selected twice as a finalist for The Brett Whiteley Art Scholarship and also for major prizes such as the Mosman Art Prize, and the Urban EDGE contemporary art prize.

During the past 10 years, Morcos has lectured and taught at Macquarie University, and in a number of art galleries including ADC: Australian Centre for Design in Sydney. She has also completed Artist-in-residence programs in Australia & overseas. In 2016 Michele collaborated on a public art project with doeanddoe to create a ten minute hand drawn animated film for Transport NSW’s Wynscreen project, while exhibiting a new collection of works for her seventh solo exhibition at Koskela Gallery in Sydney.

In March 2018 Morcos exhibited a new installation art piece for Art Month 2018 in the red project: a group exhibition curated by Alison at The Coal Loader Site in Balls Point Sydney, and in September, exhibited her eighth solo exhibition in Sydney entitled Everywhen : sensory displays of affection and alight, that focused on painted, drawn, sculpted, and coil woven artworks.

In 2020 Morcos exhibited new work at Sabbia Gallery, the Jamfactory in Adelaide, a capsule collection for Galerie Zadra and completed her 9th solo exhibition at Chrissie Cotter Gallery in Sydney.

Morcos travelled back to the stunning traditional lands of the Malyankapa, Pandjikali, Wanyuparlku and Wilyakali peoples in Far Western NSW in April 2022 to complete a drawing and painting research trip for a new collection of works to be exhibited in Sydney and Switzerland in 2022.

Mark making has been a central pillar of Morcos’s practice. While her student days were inspired by Cy Twombly, she has left him far behind to create her own visual language that comprises layers of painting, drawing, and erasure, where each layer is linked to the previous: it is the seen and the unseen. This approach has led her to investigate and incorporate elements of quantum physics, cosmology and other ideas around space and time, including Australian Indigenous notions of connectedness and “everywhen”, a term coined by anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner. These works are deeply philosophical in nature and reflect her enquiry-based approached to life.

Artist Statement from her exhibition The Enlightenment, 14 November – 17 December 2022

The landscape shapes my memories.

My memories shape the landscape.

While we sit within this period of liminal time* we may look for comfort, both mentally and physically. This comfort may be found in the simple routines of the day – reading a book, taking a walk within nature, talking to a close friend or listening to music on the couch. Something…. Anything…. that allows us to feel grounded and safe, while the systems of order and routine that used to rule our weeks are suddenly in flux and in an altered state of chaos.

In the past two years I have found comfort and a sense of calm in my studio – dreaming, reimagining and painting landscapes of places I have visited in Australia. Beautiful spaces that make my soul happy – filled with colour memories and a sense of light. I wanted to see if I could trigger a happy mental and emotional response in the here and now, without physically travelling and standing in these places, creating a type of virtual travel for these times of closed borders and lockdowns. A way of setting the mind free and opening your field of view, until we are able to travel again.

In 1996 I had the privilege of travelling and discovering the beauty and energy of Mutawintji National Park, Broken Hill and Fowlers Gap that are on the traditional lands of Malyankapa, Pandjikali and Wilyakali peoples, in Far Western NSW. I was overwhelmed and emotional at being in this landscape – filled with ancient Songlines and a kaleidoscope of colour and light. I felt like I had discovered the key, or source, akin to having a spiritual experience.

For a long time I was not sure how I could describe and creatively articulate this sensory experience.

And so I waited.

Until now.

With borders and travel routes reopened I was able to travel back to Mutawintji, 26 years after that first trip.

And it felt like not a day had passed. This new series of works for ‘The Enlightenment’ solo exhibition with Galerie Zadra captures some of the colour, beauty and light from my trip in April – continuing the conversation that was started many years ago.

*Concept of liminal time from the writings of Prof. Genevieve Bell, Director of 3A Institute, ANU

Artist Statement from her exhibition breathe landscapes, 27 May – 16 June 2020

We are all interconnected through the fabric of time, the entanglement of space, and the molecular structure of matter and particles that weave and shape our ‘Multiverse’. I am interested in how we could visualise and pictorially render the elements that invisibly float and interconnect us all on the metaphysical plane.

Through multimedia drawings, paintings and coil woven objects, my art practice creates a multilayered visual landscape that asks us to look at the infinitesimal details of nature and the cosmos, and feel the beauty and poetry that quietly surrounds us in the every-when*, as well as focusing on my Australian/Egyptian heritage and the way both cultures intersect within their coil weaving practices.

* at any or all times. The Australian anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner conveyed the idea in his 1956 essay The Dreaming, in which he coined the term ‘everywhen’. “One cannot ‘fix’ The Dreaming in time: it was, and is, everywhen” wrote Stanner, adding that The Dreaming “… has … an unchallengeable sacred authority”.