Marianne Baillieu: Morphic Fields

About the exhibition
Morphic Fields was a solo exhibition of large circular and ovoid paintings made between 1992 and 1997 by Marianne Baillieu. While her work resonates with traditions of gestural abstraction, it is equally grounded in embodied experience and spiritual inquiry.

With a tertiary background in science and anthropology, Baillieu turned to painting full-time in 1981 after selling her Melbourne gallery, Realities. The deaths of close friends and family prompted a profound emotional reckoning, which she began to channel into creative practice.

Central to Baillieu’s approach is the theory of morphic resonance, proposed in the 1980s by British scientist Rupert Sheldrake, who argued for the existence of factors beyond the laws of physics and that natural systems possess a kind of collective memory.  Working on canvas, Baillieu used her fingers or applied oil paint directly from the tube to map subtle energies that elude fixed form.

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^{Image: Exhibition catalogue cover showing Marianne Baillieu, Bipolar Fields 1994/95 (detail), oil and mixed media on canvas, 2 parts (305 x 365.5 cm overall). Courtesy of the artist; Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Melbourne; and Stephen Mori Gallery, Sydney}