Collapsing boundaries between sculpture and architecture, Callum Morton's sculptures and installations enquire into our engagement with built environments, and how we encounter, envision, and experience personal and shared spaces. He has exhibited internationally since 1990, including at the Venice Biennale.
Read MoreBorn in Montreal, Callum Morton developed interest in architecture at a young age, encouraged by his architect father and a childhood spent alongside images of iconic architectural buildings.
Morton's earliest influences include modern masterpieces like Le Corbusier's Palace of Assembly, a legislative assembly building commissioned to represent the new capital of Punjab following the Partition of India in 1947. The iconic structure, now devoid of use, prompted a lifetime enquiry for Morton into the failure of modern architecture to meet both its creator's vision and functional expectations.
Morton studied Architecture and Urban Planning at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) (1983—1985), followed by a BA in Fine Art at Victoria College (1988), and an MA in Sculpture from RMIT (1999).
Morton held his first solo exhibition at Store 5, Melbourne in 1989, having since then represented Australia twice at the Venice Biennale, where he showed Valhalla (2007), a three-quarters scaled down model of his childhood home designed and built by his father in the 1970s, scorched and in ruins.
Callum Morton's works often incorporate narratives from everyday life, books, and film, altering reimagined structures using scale, material, location, and sound and blending historical references with popular culture to distort familiar settings and create dystopian scenes.
Morton's satirical works recover fragments of existing or once-existing buildings scaled down, as in International Style (1999), which replicated the entirely glass-walled, modern country retreat for which architect Mies van der Rohe was sued due to its 'unsuitability for living'. The structure was parodied by the artist, who through party lights and sounds of laughter and chatting introduced a party inside that ended with gunshots and screams.
Gas and Fuel (2002) offered a 1:34-scale model of the Gas and Fuel Building once located on Melbourne's Federation Square, with the addition of an audio recording pleading, 'Help me, please help me!', from the soundtrack in The Fly (1958), alluding to help that will never come.
Habitat (2003) replicated a 1:50 model of a communal housing project by architect Moshe Safdie conceived for Expo1967 in Montreal, a project Morton's father helped realise around the time of Morton's birth.
The artist's re-conception of the modern living space represented a day in the life at the complex, using a looped sequence of sound and lights to compress 24 hours within 28 minutes, blending public and private spaces while addressing the mundanity of recurrence.
Babylonia (2005) showed a scaled-up model that could be entered, at two-thirds of human size, replicating the interiors of an international hotel with a line of doors that cannot be opened. The work is at once familiar yet claustrophobic, a tomb with no exit, recalling tragedies of modernity.
Monument #28: Vortex (2011) punctured a massive hole across gallery walls, replicating a shop front post-disaster. The installation, which originally opened into the Heide Museum's back gardens, alluded to the 19th-century break with landscape representation in art.
The installation echoed and marked a continuation from early works like Been There (1997—1998), commercial outlets awnings suspended from the walls, and The Heights (2005), a scaled-down balcony placed at eye level.
Callum Morton has been the recipient of many grants and awards, among which are the Australia Council New Work Grant (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), the Gold Medal at the 11th Indian Triennial (2004), where he represented Australia, and the Helen Macpherson Smith Commission at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2005).
Morton has also taught at a number of institutions since 1996, including the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the University of Melbourne, and the Victorian College of the Arts.
Callum Morton's works have been shown widely across Australia, North America, Europe, and the U.K..
Solo exhibitions include Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2020, 2012, 2001); Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2010); 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne (2006, 2002); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2005); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2003); Karen Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles (2002); and Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles (1999).
Group exhibitions include 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2013); National Gallery of Victoria (2012); Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne (2011); Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide (2010); The Fundament Foundation, Tilburg (2009); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2003); and Australian Perspecta (1995).
The artist's Instagram can be found here.
Elaine YJ Zheng | Ocula | 2021
