Joey Morgan

*An Archive for the Lost Ones* was created while Joey Morgan was living in Brooklyn, New York. During the 1980s she lived, worked and exhibited extensively in Vancouver producing several site specific installations that incorporated numerous mediums such as sculpture, photography, collage, video, and audio.

Morgan's work has consistently explored an interest in the psychology, the instability and the ambiguity of actual and dreamed experience. In *An Archive for the Lost Ones* she has presented an environment reminiscent of an archive and a laboratory. The black and white image transparencies are like fleeting moments of a past time or a dream. The glass plates sandblasted with texts and associative medical specimens combine words which are drawn from *The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations*, a writer's manual originally published in 1921 by Georges Polti that describes all possible plot-lines. Morgan's installations are poetic in their beauty but disturbing in their effect.

The audio component of *An Archive for the Lost Ones* is a ten minute eight track sound work alternating with a ten minute recording of a clear running stream.

This is Joey Morgan's first solo exhibition in Vancouver since 1988. Recent solo exhibitions have been installed at Printed Matter in New York, The Power Plant in Toronto and at Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, France. She also participated in the 1992 Sydney Biennale in Australia.


Essay: “Text for an Archive,” Barbara Burkhardt

A closeup of a grey surface in a gallery. On it, two wooden boxes with several photo-transparencies in metal frames with yellow stains lay. More of these lay in front of, and beside, the boxes. 

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Several photo-transparencies against a glowing white background. They include images of buildings, layered yellow stains and overlaid text. One of the slides with text reads "Abduction." 

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Several photo-transparencies against a glowing white background. The images in them are of cliffs and buildings, as well as yellow stains and layered text. One of the slides with text reads "Pursuit." 

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An Archive for the Lost Ones

“nO fiXeD aDdrESs is firmly rooted in a fleeting moment in the history of technology: a time when the answering machine held a certain frisson, the blinking light signified a singular connection; before the proliferation of toll numbers and sex hotlines; before cable tv and community access; when you might write down your contact info inside a matchbook (when bars had matchbooks... when people smoked in bars...) 

The confessional quality of the recorded voice soothes the listener, alternately controlling the situation and then suddenly vulnerable and rambling with stories of a photograph found. 
Other stories follow in rapid succession, urgently building one on top of the other. The listener’s position drifts between voyeur and participant, and they can keep the game going ... no one has to know you’re calling me... by dialing the next number and the next number and the next number after that. Analogies to social, psychological and theatrical conceits abound, but for the moment both the recorded voice and listener are in the game together, ... ok – maybe we should try to have a real conversation... with no time for analysis until later on.

On the fourth call, the work builds into a complex soundtrack, folding back into previous recordings until finally, overloaded, it breaks, ending abruptly with a straightforward description of the technology and a bemused invitation to continue the piece.

Thousands of responses were recorded each time the piece was presented.”

Quote from Joey Morgan, ‘nOfiXeDaDdrESs,’ dreamlab.org, December, 2021

nO fiXeD aDdrESs

This book was published in 1995 by the Contemporary Art Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition, Joey Morgan: *an Archive for the Lost Ones* at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver from September 10 – October 15, 1994. The publication contains a text by Barbara Burkhardt.

Joey Morgan

Exhibitions

Publications & Editions