Andrew Mackenzie’s review Broken Homes provided great insight into Callum Morton’s artwork Valhalla. It not only discusses the influences and concepts behind the work but clearly breaks down the multiple layers of meaning that can be read into Morton’s artwork.
Mackenzie describes the ‘home’ as “a battlefield in which the everyday drama of thwarted domesticity plays out” and notes Morton’s references to contemporary ruins, and the ‘tragic continuity of history’. Mackenzie then continues to show that this continuity is reinforced by the title Valhalla, ‘Hall of the Slain’ in Nordic mythology.
I was interested to find that Morton’s family home “Myoora” had been torn down and it is upon this realization that the work has been based. Created for the 2007 Venice Biennale the work becomes in a way an exploration of the tension between public and private space. Mackenzie insists however that the work is not a biographical projection and suggests the eroded and burnt exterior becomes a metaphor for all the damage done by ‘the simultaneous erosion of public life... and the enslavement of architecture to property development’ and I would agree with him. I would also agree that because of the small separated site the work would not necessarily be ‘immediately identifiable as art’. I hadn’t made the connection before reading the article but I feel that the specifics of the site highlight the tension between the public and the private spaces, a theme that Mackenzie suggests Morton has often alluded to through his work.
I found the article to be very interesting, informative and easy to understand considering the complexity of Callum Morton’s artworks.
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