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George Morl (b. Basildon 1994)
Lives and works in Basildon and Colchester

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George Morl is an artist and facilitator who explores human connection and bodies under technology. Interests include body images on apps, information overload, networks, ‘culture wars’, consumerism, intimacy, communication, access, and how artificial intellignece may change these.

Through a neurodivergent and disabled lived experience, they use paintings, sculptures, photography, digital media, and performance, to question structures and social relationships within physical and virtual spaces.

George often uses imagery from online culture, investigative research, personas, characters embedded in cyberspace, autobiography, and play to make and share work. Sometimes this is done working within organisations as both a hybrid of artist and facilitator to question accessibility and power.

This is often done through workshops and colloborations with communities to produce alternative stories and access.


Recent and current works:

• using smartphone apps to meet and paint people, to question the design and experience of dating apps
  
• paintings that present intimacy, touch, bodies, from a disabled and neurodivergent processing perspective
• using photographic performance, costume, and AI, to produce collages exploring self-image on social media and our reliance on identity
• organising exhibitions that question the value systems we place on objects and art
• working within Specialist Educational Schools (SEN) to produce public artwork, which subvert and reimagine scenes in video games and art history with autonomy instead of objectification
  
• collaboratively producing videos within support centres to explore importance of video games and servers for online connection
  
• constructing personas to infitrate media organisations to explore working conditions and biases and present stories
• investigating and documenting relationships between rituals of steroid culture and online chatrooms through photographs
• interventions within museum collections responding to allegories of performance of masculinity
  

🍊 Bio 🍊

George Morl (b.1994) is an artist and facilitator based in Basildon and Colchester. They currently are Programme Manager at Firstsite in Colchester, and were appointed the Jerwood Arts Newlyn Residency (2021-22) at Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange in Penzance. Morl's multidisciplinary practice comprises of paintings, sculptures, photography and video, exploring human connection under technology and networks, communication, gender, often through affecting integrative and collaborative approaches between organisations, collections, and communities. Morl received their BFA from University for the Creative Arts in 2016 and MFA in 2018. They have curated exhibitions such as Lunar Lullabies (2024) and the first solo presentation of ‘Leonora Carrington: Avatars & Alliances’ in East Anglia (2024).

‘Essex @way from keyboard?’ marked their first public artwork for Focal Point Gallery’s Railway Bridge commission 2022. In 2018 they undertook ‘Precious Boys’ a solo intervention at Southend Museums responding to the museum’s collection, investigating historical and contemporary relationships between allegory, masculinity, sexuality, and digital performance. Work has been shown at Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2022), Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, Penzance (2021), Tate Exchange, London (2019), Southend Museums (2018), UCA, Canterbury (2016), Turner Contemporary, Margate (2016). Recipient of Arts Council England Practice Grant (2022), New Histories, Cambridge (2022), Firstsite Award, Colchester (2019), TOW Residency, Southend (2020), and awarded the UCA Darren Henley Scholarship, Canterbury (2016- 2018). In 2020 Morl was a Peer to Peer UK/HK nominee and shortlisted for Platform Award 2016.


Updated 24 December 2024
All images and text © George Morl 2025