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IKHONS

Morrison Polkinghorne premiers new works this week at Rosewood hotel, Phnom Penh. The exhibition, “Ikhon”, is a collaborative show, along with eight other Khmer and expat artists in Cambodia the kingdom.  

In his earlier works Polkinghorne lived in Battambang, Cambodia for almost a decade, owned and ran an award winning lodging and art space called Bric-a-Brac. While there he collected discarded offered lotus flowers at temples and turned them into an ink. This was  a year’s process even before painting with his elixir. He then printed or stamped etchings using fresh lotus stems. Conversely, now living in Murrayville along the Victoria and South Australia border in Outback Australia he turns local gypsum into a painted gouache., then adorned with pin point, or pin-prick, patterns to create images. Nine of these latest artworks just arrived in Cambodia, turning his artistry full circle. 

Now showing in Phnom Penh, nine new works are impressions of historical maps surveying rivers and cities, cities that nurtured him in his travels and autistic life. Some of the maps date dating back to 1688. Rivers and waterways have long been themes in his pieces. His largest individual lotus artwork of a delta, 1.7m square with 20,184 lotus impressions sold to a private collector in New York. 

“I am a holistic artist, incorporating elements of nature in my pieces,’ says Morrison. “In Cambodia, I made artisanal ink distilled from local lotus; in this exhibition my brush strokes are an Australian outback pigment ground from a local gypsum stone. I crush, grin and mull the stone into a stabilised fine powder gouache brushed onto paper.”

All these three-dimensional maps are formed with a gold tip needle sourced decades ago in Yangon, Myanmar or Burma. For a handle he attaches a whittled branch from Jacaranda that the artist planted some 30 years ago in Sydney. 

Numerology is also an important component in his works, the the stroke or point sums totalled on every piece. His art numerology originates from his weaving, as there is something both sacred and comforting to counting for Morrison – from shuttles going side to side on a loom, to tallying warps and wefts. Conversely, here he pin prick, or point-ilism, to create these 3-D designs. It is his natural for him to mentally count the impressions on these works which are then noted in his artists journal. All the artworks are then both autographed and signed with the total count of pin points in every work.