Void Gallery is delighted to announce – in partnership with Derry City and Strabane District Council – the launch of Locky Morris’s billboard installations across the city, featuring images of the artist’s observations of the incidental, the mundane or the seemingly banal in our surroundings. The images punctuate the normal circulation of advertising to create a schism in everyday consumerism. Morris’s work is frequently described in terms of multi-layered poetry and his current work reminds us of our heightened awareness of the subtle changes in both the landscape and cityscape as we move through them specifically during this period of lockdown. Morris ascribes to being ‘in the moment’ and reflecting on the anthropology of things and their existence. While the works are often humorous and anecdotal, there is a poignancy to them that allow for a moment of introspection, to see the beauty and care in the small things.

The images emanate from the landscape; the billboard positioned at the crossroads of Abercorn Road and Bishop’s Street is titled No.8 and was taken at the point between the urban and the rural on Letterkenny Road . The Strand Road piece titled Outside Job is an image observed, a fragment of nearby hoarding.

“I’ve been producing images and short videos every day from the immediate landscape for a long time now. I don’t set out with a plan and it’s done mostly through walking, wandering and partly governed by chance. The things that catch my eye or surprise me I guess might not be normally considered worthy of attention. In my process I try to look and think about everything and have trouble when it comes to saying what things are more important than others. I practise being ‘in the moment’ and relish looking at things closely, almost archeologically you might say. How the atmosphere has changed; those few moments where you lose yourself in something, drift off into a reverie have become all the more precious in the current crisis. The small things in reality are not really small when you start to think about it. There may be absurd and comic notions running through the work but I like to think that ideas of tenderness, touch and care are also never far away.” – Locky Morris

This is the first in a series of Void Offsites, titled Billboard Project; the intention being to take over roadside billboards, to turn them into free public art venues and to disrupt the daily flow of advertising, replacing it with works from both national and international artists. Billboard Project will run throughout 2021.

For more about Locky’s work please visit his website or Instagram.

Inside Out VISUAL ARTS Programme 2021

Derry City and Strabane District Council is working with a range of local artists and galleries to bring a series of engaging Visual Art exhibitions outdoors and onto our streets, to be enjoyed and experienced by the public safely and at their leisure. The programme comprises six artists in total with three exhibitions agreed for delivery as part of Council’s Spring programme in March/April and another three projects planned for the summer months.

Acknowledgements

This project is presented in partnership with Derry City and Strabane District Council.

Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Enkalon Foundation, Ragdoll Foundation, COVID 19 Charities Fund, the Arts Society, Art Fund, and Garfield Weston Foundation.