American artist Mark Morrisroe was 30 years old when he died from an AIDS-related illness in 1989. In the final years of his short life Morrisroe produced photograms using x-ray imagery of his own body alongside cuttings from pornographic magazines and other ephemera.
“As his disease advanced, Morrisroe sometimes worked in a makeshift darkroom in his hospital bathroom… Garish colors, overlapping nudes, truncated typography, and jagged abstractions converge with the messy vitality of a life spent much too quickly.” (Village Voice, March 2011)
Morrisroe was a prolific artist whose wide-ranging practice focused on photography and performance. His photographic work revolved around the friends and lovers of his everyday milieu, and the exploration of his own image and identity. He experimented ceaselessly with the medium of photography, foregrounding its material characteristics through the manipulation of its materials and processes.
Morrisroe was born in Massachussets in 1959 and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1977 to 1981. He died in New Jersey in 1989.
This exhibition forms part of Liverpool Biennial 2012 – The Unexpected Guest.
Open:
10am – 5pm, Tue – Sun
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