Anthony Morton (b. 1992. Durban, South Africa) is an artist and theorist based in Bergen, Norway. Morton’s work has been exhibited at a variety of art institutions in China, Norway, and South Africa. He is the director of The Place of Shade, recently published in edition 11 of the Nordic Journal of Artistic Research. Morton studied contemporary art and philosophy in Japan, South Africa, and Norway. He was awarded an MA in Contemporary Art (2019) and an MA in Philosophy (2023) from the University of Bergen.
Morton’s philosophical research is concerned with art and image-making (painting, photography, and video). His art-practice integrates this research. Using image-making as an inquisitional medium, he explores the nature of images as phenomena. He employs a naturalistic framework by which images are seen as expressions of the cosmos that extend consciousness but are nevertheless contextualised within human tradition, such as art history.
Morton makes images that tell a story of exploration with a philosophical foundation. The images propose a space within them where things appear to exist. Due to their physicality on the image surface, they seem to have left the pictorial plane they propose. The direction of emergence, from inside the pictorial plane to out (in the noumenal realm and our minds), implies a journey from a place that evades physical access. The images—evident of these journeys—allude to a reason, an intention, an agency and therefore a message beckoning from the place within. Here, forms cite a multitude of departures towards narratives; an endeavour of the helmsmanship of space, where images are becoming and have left the scent of seared steak.
