B.

For the past 10 years Julia Morison's work has been moving from the formal abstracts we last saw at the McDougall in the 1983 Rhombus works, towards large mixed media pieces, highly complex and conceptualised. Here in four major works Golem, Dog deifier: reified God, Vademecum and Hermes, the artist uses mystical signs from ancient occult or hermetic writings, juxtaposed with cryptic images from contemporary culture. Materials ranging from excrement to gold leaf underline our cultural responses to 'substance' and become important components in the formal abstract qualities of the work.

"The paradox of these works, Vademecum and Golem", Julia Morison says, "is that while the choice of materials and images is an attempt to resist the post-industrial tendency of emptying signs of their meaning, they are fundamentally works of appropriation. Their concern has been to reformulate an effective visual system that is sufficiently coherent to determine readings while ensuring that the components are diverse and enigmatic enough to provide an alternative to historical dogma."

('Julia Morison', Bulletin, No.60, November/December 1988, p.5)

This exhibition was held at the McDougall Art Annex.