Aiden Morse

Soft Opening

Soft Opening, Aiden Morse’s solo debut, is a distillation of themes common to his practice: domesticity, glamour and monogamy. In his exhibition of new work, photographs of seemingly disparate objects, each tied to specific personal experiences, are displayed alongside images of Morse and his girlfriend at events. The Photoshop-polished aesthetic of these works distances them from the photographic vernacular. Instead, they resemble advertisements gone awry; fantasies recalled using a capitalist vocabulary.

While Morse’s images have been crafted to the point of uncanny lifelessness, they still exhibit clues as to the method of their construction. It is when these clues are noticed that the veracity of the entire exhibition comes into question: the autobiographical becomes indistinguishable from the aspirational. Instead of representations of the real, Morse’s photographs are a tribute to the slippery and seductive power of images.

Morse’s work has been shown both locally and internationally. Recent highlights include Different Domain at The Royal Standard, UK, Ambients at Peninsula Art Space, NY, Sacred Machine at Mutuo Centro de Arte, Barcelona and LIKE at Udstillingsstedet Q, Denmark. Nationally, Morse has featured in It Is Not It That We See at Sawtooth ARI, Tasmania and En Suite, a two person project with Anna Crews at Fort Delta.