Toussaint III, December 2014

Mali Morris RA (b. 1945)

RA Collection: Art

One of a set of four screenprints, entitled Toussaint I - IV produced as a homage to the musician Allen Toussaint. This set of prints are artist's proofs from an edition of ten. Morris subsequently released an edition of thirty.

Morris wrote of Toussaint : “I made this set of four prints with Kip Gresham, a master printer based in Cambridge, in December of 2014. They were conceived as individual works that could be shown singly or together, in any combination.

They are titled Toussaint I, II, III and IV , after the musician Allen Toussaint, born in New Orleans in 1938. He wrote and produced many of the great songs I remember from the 1960s, when I had just started out as an art student. They still sound terrific to me. I was listening to one the other day called Tiddle Winks. Its imagery and feel and rhythm reminded me of the many studies I’d made in preparation for the silkscreens. It seemed too literal to use as a title, so I named the series of four after the composer, as homage. Kip said he knew all about Allen Toussaint, was himself a fan. It wasn’t surprising to me, as we like the same music playing as we work. I think of our productions in print as collaborations” (Mali Morris RA, May 2015).

Mali Morris was born in North Wales and studied Fine Art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, BA (1963-68) and the University of Reading, MFA (1968–1970). Her concentrated compositions engage the viewer in the contemplation of pure abstraction, in which colour relationships structure a luminosity, creating complex layers of space. They explore the language of painting, and its ever-changing expressive possibilities.She has held over 30 solo shows worldwide since 1977, and has been included in numerous group shows, at the Barbican, Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, Whitworth Gallery Manchester, Museum of Wales Cardiff, as well as a number overseas. She has received awards from the Arts Council, British Council, DAIWA Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Elephant Trust, GLAA, The Lorne Award and the Sunny Dupree Family Award, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2009.

She has been a lecturer and examiner at many departments of Fine Art, and from 1991-2005 was Senior Lecturer in Painting at Chelsea College of Art, University of the Arts, London. She is a Founder-member of the charity A.P.T. at Creekside, South London, where she has her studio, and is a Trustee of the charity Poetry London.