︎ Summary

Recent work explores how human connection is shaped and limited by modern technology, and how perception influences our engagement with digital interfaces and physical spaces. Through painting, these ideas focus on touch and embodiment, emphasising the experience of living in a body rather than observing one.

Intimacy in an Age of Physical Absence (2020) reflects on isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic as experienced by queer and disabled bodies. Rather than presenting isolation as a new, universal condition, the work exposes how anxiety, loneliness, and disconnection were already deeply felt by marginalised communities long before lockdown. As the external world became dominated by fear and restriction, an internal struggle for intimacy and closeness intensified. The already limited ways queer and disabled individuals accessed visibility, support, and physical connection were further reduced.

During this period, Morl observed an increased reliance on queer mobile dating apps, marked by heightened frequency and urgency of communication. Messaging became a way to express the desire for physical connection beyond both national restrictions and the limits of virtual interaction. This intensity was reflected in data such as GPS tracking, revealing users in extreme proximity. The dominance of torso imagery across digital platforms further amplified the longing for touch as a means of managing anxiety.

Touch is deeply political, shaped by social judgments about which bodies are permitted intimacy. Within queer history, fear and regulation of touch are closely tied to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, which continues to inform representation and desirability. Artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans have explored vulnerability and care through intimate depictions of the body, contributing to a visual language in which bodily imagery functions as coded communication.

Although queer spaces are often imagined as inclusive, they have historically produced exclusions through power structures, accessibility for disabled people, objectification of some marganalised identities, and narrow ideals of desirability. Though access to intimacy can be increased through the digital space for disabled people, some power dynamics.

While working as a keyworker during the COVID-19 pandemic, Morl began producing a series of self-portraits that gradually merged with figures encountered on queer dating apps. Made in real time, these works were developed through live conversations with app users, with images of the paintings shared as they evolved and immediate feedback exchanged. This process blurred the boundaries between self-representation and digital encounter, embedding dynamics of validation, intimacy, and exchange into the making of the work.

In the painting, intimacy becomes regulated and abstracted, with multiple figures acting as allegorical or memorial forms of the present moment. Morl’s figures are fluid, fractured, and sometimes digitally manipulated prior to painting, rejecting the academic or anatomical figure in favour of bodies that reflect neurodivergent and introspective sensory experiences. The body is presented as a shifting network of perception and touch, resisting fixed identities or singular readings.

The figures are composed using materials such as protein powders and flavourings, referencing personal negotiations with body ideals, gender norms, and subcultural identities. Clothing and textiles associated with LGBT media aesthetics, such as sportswear, are sometimes applied directly to the canvas, linking desire, gaze, and touch.

The paintings combine digital iconography, pandemic-era newspaper collage, and references to art history, including Renaissance angels and maternal figures. When exhibited, the works are installed to touch the floor above ceramic tiles that evoke medical environments and institutional spaces.

︎ Assosiated Awards

Jerwood Newlyn Residency, 2020-2022
Firstsite Award, 2020
 

︎ Assosiated Press

George Morl, Communal Cherub A Capellas, Gay Times, 2020
George Morl, National Autistic Society, 2020