Viewing Annie Morris

Annie Morris has had a brilliant 12 months. In 2021 she enjoyed her first solo museum exhibition in the UK, as well as a solo show at Timothy Taylor London, and designed in collaboration with her husband Idris Khan the buzzy Connaught Christmas tree.

Now she’s enjoying her first solo exhibition in France in the newly completed Oscar Niemeyer Pavilion at Château La Coste. Co-curated by Gagosian Director Georgina Cohen, it features new stack sculptures — the artist’s towers of vivid colour spheres — tapestries, drawings and paintings that reflect Morris’s interest in colour, the fragility of life and the space between figuration and abstraction.

Also featured is a 6-metre tall bronze stack sculpture, her largest work to date, which was especially conceived for the vineyard’s extensive grounds. The latest addition to Château La Coste’s outdoor art and architecture trail, it stands opposite Louise Bourgeois’s menacing Crouching Spider (2007), creating a powerful dialogue between two artists exploring the themes of motherhood and birth.

‘My sculptures are about holding onto something that’s fallen, and to express the hope and defiance of life,’ Morris said ahead of the exhibition. ‘The vibrant pigment on the surface is a way of trying to freeze the moment when paint hasn’t yet dried, and is caught in its most raw form.’
If you’re cruising around Provence this summer, it’s not to be missed.