Morgan Stokes
CV
Current
Where The Body Ends,
R.M.Williams Residency, Sydney/Cadi, March-June 2025
Virgin, Oigåll Projects, Melbourne/Narrm, June 2025
Where The Body Ends
R.M. Williams Residency
Sydney/Cadi, Australia
March-June 2025
The works in Where The Body Ends are formal studies in materiality, bridging the traditional components of painting – stretcher bars, cloth, and paint – with remnants of R.M.Williams’ legacy; discontinued lines of leather and suede salvaged from the company’s Adelaide factory. This fusion of artistic and artisanal materials interrogates notions of value and obsolescence, highlighting the liminal space between utility and aesthetics. The leather and suede, imbued with histories of labour and durability,
Stokes emphasises texture as a point of tension within this body of work. The leather’s rugged tactility confronts the ghostliness of silk, while paint acts as both mediator and disruptor. Each work embodies a negotiation of boundaries – between body and material, utility and ornament, permanence and decay. Through this series, Stokes reframes the relationship between material and maker, history and presence. Where The Body Ends is not only a study of material histories but also a poetic inquiry into the limits and possibilities of matter itself, asking how the textures of our lived experience are woven into the things we leave behind.
Pigment and acrylic on canvas, linen, hessian.
Acrylic and pigment on stitched linen, canvas, hessian.
R.M. Williams leather, silk organza, Australian Pine, pastel and stain, polyester organza, Australian Pine.
Acrylic and pigment on canvas, silk organza
R.M. Williams shoe, automative paint, exhaust pipe, leather string, mirrored acrylic base (detail)
R.M. Williams shoe, automative paint, exhaust pipe, leather string, mirrored acrylic base
R.M. Williams shoe, automative paint, exhaust pipe, leather string, mirrored acrylic base
Pigment and acrylic on canvas, silk organza.
Pigment and acrylic on canvas, linen, hessian.
Silk organza, polyester, R.M. Williams leather.