July 2024, Solo Show/Residency
When it Rains Ch.2
‘Unfolding Futures’, Futures Hub Amsterdam
Jun 2024, KABK Grad Show
When it Rains Ch.1
Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Apr 2024, Public Reading
Mnemotope 004
Bog Bodies Press, Eindhoven
Mar 2024, Group Show
Can Dormant Seeds Bloom?
‘Fragments in Transit’, Beetroot Studios, Thessaloniki
Nov 2023, Group Show
Nooderlicht Photo Festival
Groningen
Jun 2023, Group Show
Everything That Melts is About to Blend
MAPS, De Helena, The Hague
Nov 2022, Group Show
Reservoir
‘Yolun Dişinda’, Darağaç, Izmir
May 2022, Solo Show
Natura
Soearth Projects, Kildare
Mar 2019, Group Show June 2023
DUPA End of Year
Copper House Gallery, Dublin
Apr 2024
Mnemotope 004
Bog Bodies Press, Eindhoven
Mar 2024
Weather Diaires
Trigger FOMU, Antwerp
Mar 2019
Ireland’s Post Polio Survivors
University Times Magazine, Dublin
July 2024
FUTURES HUB
Unfolding Futures Summer Residency, Amserdam
Jan 2022
ZONE Residency
Borsec, Romania
June 2023
Student Development Programme
Canon, Remote
May 2022 Mar 2021
Agillity Award
Arts Council Ireland
Mar 2021
Belfast Photo Festival
Shortlisted
Aug 2022 - 2024
Master’s Photography & Society
Royal Academy of Art the Hague, Netherlands
Sep 2016 - 2020
Bachelor’s Zoology
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Aug 2024
Best of Grad 2024
Metropolis M Magazine, Utrecht
mail: photo@benjmorrison.com
Public Moments
Writing
Residencies
Grants & Awards
Education
Press
- Solo Show
- at Futures Hub Amsterdam
18-07-24
Curator Nurai Broafull
Art Director Kim Boske
In the words of Maria Stepanova, a diary is a series of proofs that life has continuity and history. Stemming from my grandmother’s habitual act of diary keeping, When it Rains has developed into a long-term investigation into the this behaviour. Through this
practice-led research I ask; What is the value of human perception in a world of increasing mediation? Is their ‘clarity’ in the ambiguousness of human perception? Should images, distinguished by their ability to represent the world in ‘clear’ detail, determine how we navigate lived experience? During this two-week
residency at Futures, I have collected both material and ephemeral traces of my experience to illustrate the potential of looking with photography and to broaden my own understanding of diary-keeping.
- Group Show ‘I Wonder Where it Lands’
- at KABK Graduation Show
June/July 2024
Supervised by
Sara Blokland, Andrea Stultiens and Tom Viaene
Exhibition Text
I smell the rain, underneath the lime tree, sun on my neck, the bees in summer, frozen stream, breath steaming, black shallow night, hands grasping, a garden forgotten, body spinning, the wind pulling, eyes squinting, light of day cresting, dipping, resting.
The weather is our grand theatrical stage for the performance of our everyday routines. To events that mark us, to those that enter the realm of forgetting. The weather is unceasingly there, in our collective and individual memory, and in the incessant traces it leaves on body and land alike. Seeking Haraway’s ‘objective perception through partial perspective’, my grandmother’s weather diary presented itself as a novel opportunity to rethink the act of looking and recording for oneself. Through a diary dialogue spanning sixty four years between my grandmother and I, When it rains aims to reinforce the intimate connection between ways of looking and ways of being. Working through found material, text, audio and moving imagery this work embraces nostalgia and curiosity as a space of active reconnection.
This work was created as part of my two year Master’s project for the MA in Photography & Society (MAPS) at the Royal Academy of Art the Hague (KABK).
- Publication
- in Mnemotope Issue 004
April 2024
Published by
Bog Bodies Press
- Group Show ‘Fragments in Transit’
- MAPS x Beetroot Studios
- 08-03-24
Curated by
Tashiya de Mel & Gundega Strauberga
This place was once a tower, a home, a garden. Now it is a square.
It remembers the comings and goings of peoples, from Turks, to Slavs, to Jews and Greeks. Time has washed away the stains, yet traces linger still. In the burst of pigeon flight, to the slow slink of the ginger cat. Amongst the blues and reds of the scrawling graffiti and in the scarred bark of the two trees. It rests on the hands and faces of the people that sit in the shade of the byzantine wall.
A central stage for small acts, the square invited us to sit and watch the shadows grow. What can be found in absence? Can dormant seeds bloom? From the physical act of placing a seed in the soil to the chance encounter of two like-minded strangers, we document these encounters. Through this artistic intervention, we have seen the ghosts of the city, hiding in the quiet whispers of the walls.
- Group Show ‘Everything that Melts is About to Blend’
- MAPS
23-06-23
- Supervised & Curated by
- Jana Romonova, Daniel Siegersma & Dirk Jan-Visser
I hold a red leather bound diary in my hands. It is my grandmothers, and it tells the story of a garden. A space for connection with the cycle of the seasons, the slow passing of years and the fading of lifetimes. Like a tree, in an existence of constant exposure, this diary plants memory in time and place.
What then happens when the seasons shift?
MAPS x Darağaç
November 2022
Curated by
Pascal Giese & Manu Ferneini
In recent years Turkey has face unprecedented water scarcity challenges. It is believed that overall water demand in Turkey has doubled in the second half of the last century, and continues to rise as rising global temperatures push water resources to their limit. In the face of this growing crisis, the photographic work ‘Reservoir’ follows the historical traces of water in the ancient city of Izmir (Smyrna), Turkey’s third largest city.
Working alongside photojournalist Roger Anis, we traversed the region searching for the lost body of water, Lake Halkapına. Using a postcard as our jumping off point, we photographed the spaces the lake had been along with other bodies of water within the city, from the dried out lake of Kültürpark to the abandoned foundations of a skyscraper. We also travelled to the ancient city of Ephesus, once a thriving port city that no longer reaches the sea. In our search we discovered a new artificial lake of steel and glass squatting on top of the old lake, Atatürk Stadium.
‘Reservoir’ speaks of a hibernating beast, a great body of water that is slowly being drained from place and memory. This work pushes the audience into motion, following the movement of water through the city, no longer following the natural topography but instead flowing down gutters and drains, sequestering in forgotten places.