Ladder Years

Through my daughter’s eyes

As I climb

These ladder years

A numb uncertainty

With veiled hope

Peers from the middle rung.

Fragile, I stand alone.

My roots deep in the sanctuary of  warm earth

and yet, as yet

No petals unfold

To greet the sun.

I remain within

And I remain without

Subdued,

yet compelled

To leave the depths

And take the next unclear step.

This series of photographs show my daughter Florence navigating her way through the turbulent teenage years. Showing her dreamy, eccentric and unique nature, the images work as a memory bank of her changing exterior exposing a stillness, an intensity mirroring my own complexities. Florence did not talk until she was four years old and now, tri-lingual, chooses words delicately and carefully. The images evoke the wordless Florence.

 Her love of nature led me to make images that protected her with its glory and gently probing tendrils. Through the saftey curtain of this fecund  environment she peers at what can often seem a hostile world.

Hidden, fragile, foreign; frightened, thoughtful, courageous, her love for, and her desire to be inside nature prompted these photographs which I took over the course of 4 years. Florence looks at the world differently revealing a sensitivity, a humility and a profundity. Playful and majestic this series has found some beauty within the demons that appear during these tempestuous years that is adolescence.

Jayne Morley 2015

Je Suis...............
EMMAÜS Neuilly sur Marne

Just back from an extrordinary journey of Stockport, North Wales and Margate for new project "Shadow Girl". haunting and transforming.
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Shadow Girl

Jayne Morley traces the footsteps of her childhood dreams focusing on the places she lived and visited family. Stockport, Manchester, North wales and Margate, a nostalgic loop of forgotten memories emerging with the aid of a found mannequin. Entering previous homes, schools and dreamt of places, Jayne attempts to restore her life which spiritually ceased in 1977 with the suicide of her father. She endeavours to bring sense to the magnitude of this event on her life in her desire to lay the shadows, that have shaped her life, to rest. Like a magnet she travelled these parts of England and Wales “putting herself back together again.” Entering these old homes reassured Jayne that she had not left her shadows there, that she carried herself with her and that the red bricked buildings of Stockport were just that. Serendipidous apparitions and the real life appearances of her daughter Florence and her partner provided links to her present creating a safe perameter to focus on this dream-like state.

The mannequin Jayne reveals a world where everything was bigger and Jayne, the photographer, discovers, through the placing of ‘herself’, that Jayne, the girl, was always looking on.  Shadow Girl is a memoir of a woman who for many years found it difficult to be on this earth, casting shadows around her and remaining in these shadows for a great part of her life.

Je Suis Magnifique

Preparing for Je Suis Magnifique, at EMMAUS neuilly sur Marne. An amazing project i have been working on for the last few months:

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Jayne Morley, artiste, has been a regular face at EMMAUS, Neuilly Plaisance et Nuilly-sur Marne for the last few months and has recently been working with the Companions on her devised project Je Suis Là ou Je suis Magnifique, an exploration of self- identity, loss, belonging and hope,  common themes in Morley’s work made real by the stories of the people portrayed here. It has been a journey of focus, revelation, exploration and introspection. Working with charcoal, pastel, clay, words and the camera Morley has created, with the companions, a valuable piece of documentary that  is revealing, poignant and full of dignity.

“Jayne Morley’s work is transformative; she creates miniature miracles which abound in richly sensual colours and playful, ever‐surprising forms where an alchemy takes place. Her work is shot through with intuition and intelligence, and she is endowed with a wonderful eye. But at no point does this become an exercise in abstraction. Morley always foregrounds her emotional sensibility, Her photos breathe and move and take us on a voyage of discovery.”

 

opening night photos Natasha Morley

the first sale

review from opening

an exhibition currently poetic, humane, dreamlike and so real ...

Just finished hanging Charlotte's Garden, which of course had its happy accidents. Looks great, thanks to Sounkary for all your work. Exhausted and hopeful that people will be touched by it. A woman wandered in to the gallery as we were working "qu'est ce que c'est, c'est magnifique, c'est superb, c'est genial, je dois revenir" either a mad woman or a very receptive arts reviewer. But i liked her.