Mali Morris’s studio is imbued with a joyful sense of domesticity that belies the industrial nature of the building. Vases of tulips top the filing cabinets, every chair holds a throw or cushion and plant pots line the balcony. Below runs Deptford Creek, which has flowed through this land for centuries. ‘It’s the reason I chose this corner,’ says Mali, who was part of the collective of artists who found the former warehouse in 1995, chalking out their own spaces ahead of internal walls being installed and setting up the charity that now owns it, Art in Perpetuity Trust (A.P.T.).
Further increasing the warmth of the room are the paintings that fill the walls, featuring her exhilaratingly coloured and juxtaposed geometric shapes. A survey of her work opened at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery in September, spanning the past 25 years of a career devoted to exploring abstraction. She describes a fascination with ‘the luminosity that comes from colour relationships and colour coming through colour’ and cites Henri Matisse as an inspiration. ‘He led me back to the Venetians and all the great colourists of the past.’ The intense saturation is achieved through layering of acrylic paint and she works flat, setting her canvases on trestles or – if they are vast – on the floor. ‘For those works, I put a plank on a couple of bricks and crawl along it to reach different parts,’ Mali says, adding that there is a pleasing sharpness of outline in some paintings. ‘Recently, my work has become more precise.’
Mali comes to the studio seven days a week and her husband, the sculptor Stephen Lewis, has a studio downstairs. There is a large gallery space (‘Not specifically for the artists here – we invite others to show,’ says Mali) and a programme of educational projects. The trustees of A.P.T. are external, but artists serve on various committees. ‘We’re a supportive community; some of us go back years.’ In the current rather bleak landscape of artists’ studios – news usually relates to rent increases or closures – this corner of south east London is a veritable beacon of light.
‘Mali Morris: Calling’ is at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, until December 22: ikon-gallery.org | malimorris.co.uk
