Embodied Energy

This exhibition presents an unparalleled opportunity to see and experience the work of Cambridge-based artist Loukas Morley at ArtSpace5-7. Spanning over 30 years of experimentation and discovery, it highlights Morley’s life-long interests in sustainability and the environment, the life cycle of objects, their embodied energy and transformation over space and time. 

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The idea of embodied energy is borrowed from both research and practice and is a way to understand the total effort needed to create the things around us. From the initial discovery and extraction of raw materials, to their processing and transformation into products, to their transportation, installation and eventual removal and disposal, we are forced to think not just in terms of immediate utility but about the sum of all the energy required for their existence. Morley’s art acknowledges and highlights this effort, drawing our attention to the journey as well as the outcome. His interventions re-activate, release and contribute to this life cycle, thereby creating and adding value.

 

Long before the current pre-occupation with the environment, Morley has been fascinated with recycling, searching for ways to illuminate the hidden beauty in things that are overlooked or discarded, pushing the boundaries of what can be transformed from something unwanted and unseen into something of unquestionable beauty, quality and value. Morley’s unwavering fascination with materials means that every element of each artwork has been carefully chosen. It comes from something re-purposed, re-imagined, re-designed and given new life. The underlying structures of both paintings and sculptures provide unique surfaces and settings, from salvaged and reclaimed materials - woods, paper, paint and more – often from historic sites and unexpected locations with their own rich histories. 

 

The exhibition demonstrate the breadth and depth of Morley’s practice. From artworks like Chalk board rubber and Collapsed forms in the great Surrealist tradition of the ‘ready-made’, to his gestural paintings reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism, or his reference to the classical world in Assemblages and Friendship and Holding Freda, Morley evokes experiences and embodied emotion as well as energy. The Stratum Series and the Arch Paintings, offer carefully constructed abstract compositions across layers of paint and mixed mediums in works which Morley explains, ‘have been many paintings’.  They hint at a mystery which lies below and emerges from within. In his most recent Cloud Paintings, Morley offers a lightness of being reminiscent of landscapes, reflecting the joys and the light of Spring. They are exhibited here for the first time alongside his Box Painting, which took years to create and was completed here, on site, in Portugal Place. 

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In a world where everyone is in a rush, for Morley, time is both a medium and a method. In spite of their seeming spontaneity, many of the artworks in this exhibition have been created over years. While the carbon footprint of the artworld is shockingly high, from the international travel of people and objects, to the waste created by bespoke and temporary shows – this exhibition showcases truly exception and local talent with a low carbon footprint, further off-set by Morley’s mindful approach and use of recycled materials. Local art with a global conscience. 

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Anna M. Dempster 2025