Heather & Ivan Morison hired an aeroplane to write the name of their favourite brand of Russian ice cream, ‘Inmarko’, in the sky above Akademgorodok, the town of science, Siberia, Russia
7 texts hand-painted by a signwriter, 2004

We hired an aeroplane in Siberia and its’ writing of the name of our favourite Russian ice cream in the sky was re-presented at New Art Gallery Walsall in their window gallery space. We employed a signwriter to hand-paint seven individual’s stories. Each text recounts a moment in the life of someone in Akademgorodok, whilst a letter from the word ‘Inmarko’ is written in the sky above. Every week Robin Summerskill, the sign writer, hand-painted one of these captured moments on to a coloured wall in the space. After a week the wall was painted over with a new colour, and the sign writer painted the next person's story. Each wall colour followed on from the last in spectral order, and each linked directly with a colour intrinsic to that week’s text.

I have never been to Akademgorodok, the Siberian town of science, and doubt I ever will. But I’ve met some of its inhabitants through moments in their lives, captured as an aeroplane wrote the name of Heather and Ivan Morison’s favourite brand of Russian ice-cream in the skies overhead.
This summer, their stories have been sign-written one by one in The New Art Gallery’s window. Scaffolding is erected, text painted out and the sign-writer returns to paint the next tale. A Walsall passer-by looks up and sees the colour is different, the words have changed, this is Sasha Potapov and not Anna Yau. A moment far away becomes a moment here and now. Words slow each of these instants, their insignificance made monumental by the scale of the text and the labour of painting it.
I’m intrigued by this play of time and scale, of near and far, of mundanity and meaning in Heather and Ivan Morison’s work, their use of the actual, the plausible and the faintly improbable. They use images sparingly, as if images speak more if they’re sought after or hard-won. Or perhaps left to the imagination, images speak most of all . . .
And so I imagine Akademgorodok. Upstairs in the building, you can hear the buzz of the plane as it swoops and dives over the Siberian taiga. Somewhere a dog barks. Birdsong drifts through the gallery, floating up stairwells and lift shafts, animating painted landscapes. Standing by the office photocopier, I think I hear it. And, for an instant, I see clouds of black-veined white butterflies, and Lilia Ivanova hiding among the trees.
Emily Marsden
Curator at New Art Gallery Walsall