Broken Homes Andrew Mackenzie on Callum Morton

The Broadsheet review of the Venice- celebrated piece Vallhala draws from the nexus in Morton's upbringing and the work's metaphor. The author alludes to the psychology of the artist in presenting a "smouldering" battle scarred, tenement shell, conscious of the unnecessary glamourisation of the effects of destruction, the article cites the artist's naivety.

The transpositions between what the author describes as "public and private" life becomes a certain reference throughout the articles duration, he contrasts the idea in a paragraph quoting Mary Jane Jacobs, he also refers to the "internalising of domestic space" and "enervation of public domain" in another. He then writes of eroded public life and repressed private life. There are numerous other incidences of that argument in the work, but the description, "anti social art of spatial introversion" was found to being one of the many, particularly interesting combinations, after drawing this initial (Public/Private) conclusion.

The seriousness of the work provides the Author with an insight into some major political conditions, the works ferocity addresses. The writer's enthusiasm and rhetoric are quite possible narrative toward the visual impact of the Callum Morton work. He describes the artist's disparate upbringing with a similar zeal, intending to create a sentiment between the bombed out image of the house and alluding to the home it actually was.

There was an little mention toward the contrived austerity of the arrangement, each bullet mark, pristine, clean- these are demands of a prima donna in a war savaged environment. Although the writer was fast to refer to the Vandals of Rome and, albeit somewhat prematurely, the flattening of Dresden, the more psychological elements within the work- Graffiti for example , was an aspect that I personally had not thought dealt with by the use of a Psychological analysis of the Artist. I was awestruck by Valhalla's uncanny representation and its bewilderingly unheard message of peace. Perhaps this article was written from an editorial perspective, exposing the vulnerable biography of the artist.