The press of Heather & Ivan Morison

Publication:
The Times, Weekend Review, Saturday May 22nd 2004

Headline:
Allotment Art

Editorial:

By Morgan Falconer

Gardens, according to the Tate exhibition Art of the Garden, are places of the mind. They might furnish you with spuds, and their floral borders might brighten your view, but they're also places to cultivate a fantasy. Given the parlous state of Edgbaston allotment tended by Heather & Ivan Morison, two young artists whose work gets its first major exposure in the show, that's probably a good thing. "We're not really very good gardeners," Heather tells me, standing over a swelling mound of a once-topiaried hedge.
They initially took on the allotment when they needed somewhere to install a miniature version of Derek Jarman's Dungeness garden, but they soon became entranced. Ivan would come home with stories of peculiar dramas that could befall a quiet corner of Birmingham - thefts of strimmers and Victorian edging - and the couple began to feel that the place had a life of its own. Indeed when I visited, Heather had just discovered a bottle of Ukrainian vodka in her shed. She was getting visitors.
Thus came the idea of postcards (on display in the exhibition) to tell the world of these goings-on, and thus were born the mythic characters of Heather and Ivan Morison the gardeners - a kind of heterosexual horticultural Gilbert and George. The couple met when they were studying in Brighton in the early 1990s, but the comic, mildly smutty texts that adorn their postcards make them seem a fiction: "Ivan Morison is astounded by the excellent progress of the plants in his greenhouse. His Long Green Stripped marrows are developing well, as are his Ornamental gourds and Atlantic Giant pumpkins." From here their work spread into films, drawings and sound recordings, all executed with a light documentary touch.
In reality the allotment is an odd mix of working garden and artists studio. When Heather showed me round she seemed to think it important to point out where they did the potting, but then almost neglected to mention that there was a clay model of John F. Kennedy under the garden seat, that Marilyn Monroe had been lost presumed dead when the apple tree collapsed on her, and that there was also an entire "lost tribe" beneath the tangled gooseberry bush.
Ivan couldn't join us to explore these wonders as he was away in Rotterdam where the couple are working on another horticultural project. However with the aid of a laptop computer propped in the greenhouse, Heather was able to show me a film of Ivan in the flesh - naked in fact - beckoning the viewer into the garden from beyond the flowers.
Ironically perhaps, it is the couple's success with their "allotment art" which has led to the somewhat overgrown state that the place is in now. The postcards led to a range of commissions from galleries and the two have spent the past 18 months taking residencies in far-flung parts. In New Zealand they have recorded the "queenless roar" of bees when their mother is taken from the hive; in Siberia they've mourned the disappearance of Siberian larches; and to while away four weeks spent on a container ship from Shanghai to Auckland, they wrote a sci-fi novel.
Heather admitted that there might come a time when their art leaves their garden behind. What would take its place, I ask. "Well, you know," she says, gazing dreamily out of the greenhouse, "we'd really like an arboretum."