Whilst the Morisons examine the extraordinary beauty and detail of the natural world, they also acknowledge the presence of threat and often these two worlds come together to create a sense of disorientation. Recently, they have begun to probe further the notion of the unknown through an ongoing investigation that sees a mapping of history and the natural world, come intriguingly close to alien intent. The resultant works both disturb and embody notions of beauty derived from nature.
Their most recent work, Dark Star, made for the Venice Biennale, is a slide-animation and sound installation that documents the artists' search of America for the original nomadic groups of people who travelled through the States in house-trucks made from felled timber. Whilst there, they gathered accounts from these New Age American Gypsies on their time spent building, travelling and living in their rolling homes.
The medium format slide-film is accompanied by a range of animated, ominous crystalline forms that hover above the barren landscapes of Slab City, California. These meteorites cast a flickering shadow over the many house-trucks, caravans and everyday detritus that have seemingly been abandoned in the rush to avoid the moment of collision that ceaselessly threatens but never ensues.
Hannah Firth, And So it Goes, exh. cat., Artists from Wales at the 52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2007

Quartzsite, Arizona is the very definition of a one-horse town. An arid dust bowl covered in mobile homes and roadhouses inhabited by retired sun seekers and wanderers who make a living flogging bric-a-brac at the annual mineral fairs. It once had a busy mining industry, attracting settlers from all over America, but now it attracts aliens, who seem particularly fascinated by the area's lonesome appeal. Last year there were several hundred sightings of UFOs.
Artists Heather and Ivan Morison used Quartzsite as the setting for a slide show about the first travellers who made a perilous drive across America in timber house trucks. The work was called Dark Star and guilefully mixed these nomadic aliens journeying through Indian country with today's supernatural encounters. The photographs featured cumbersome crystalline forms hovering ungainly over the desert, casting shadows across the caravans and debris left by visitors. This manipulation of historical truth and fiction is becoming synonymous with the Morisons.
Jessica Lack, Artists of the week 16: Heather and Ivan Morison, The Guardian, 2008

Dark Star
2007
Medium format transparencies transferred to HD video and collaged with CGI imagery.
HD projection with 5:1 surround sound
Dimensions variable
3 minutes 41 seconds

Commissioned for the Welsh Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007