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TRISH THE FAILED REALIST, 2011 MORRISSEY Trish Mo
rrissey develops and plays characters that resonate with her own life and archives material to make photographs and films, sometimes disturbing, often funny. Here we present two of her complementary bodies of work. Morrissey’s son was born with health difficulties when her daughter was three years old. Confined to the house with two small children, Morrissey needed to find her materials and subject matter within the home. The Failed Realist evolved from a rainy day face painting activity into a collaboration between mother and daughter. Morrissey’s daughter decided to paint her mother’s face, choosing subjects from her immediate experience and naming the pictures. Morrissey submitted to these desires and, together they photographed the results. The series title comes from the French philosopher and psychologist Georges-Henri Luquet (1876-1965), whose studies of the evolution of children’s drawing based on stages of realism were published in 1927 (translated into English, 2001). The ‘failed realism’ stage comes between the ages of four and six, when a child wants to represent the world and yet their verbal and visual skills exceed their mark making abilities. This page, top row: Pretty Ogre; A Wild Dog Chasing a London Bird; Bitzer Bottom row: Party Girl; Ladybird; Tortoro 22