Show World in ‘The Village Voice’, By Vince Aletti. Review of Seven Years at Yossi Milo Gallery, 25th January, 2005
Dublin-born, London-based Trish Morrissey, 37 is a plain-looking teenager inan unflattering pixie haircut, a rather pretty girl in a baby doll dress and bare feet, a cocky young man in a spread-collar knit, an anxious new mother, a happy young wife. Like Cindy Sherman, she inhabits these characters mostly by putting on their clothes; but in Morrissey’s case, some of these outfits were once her own. And not only does she enlist her older sister as an often cross-dressing partner in this serial role-playing, she stages most of her meticulously styled color snapshots in and around her family’s Dublin home. The results aren’t exactly nostalgic remembrance of things past. Though the moments she re-creates are largely uneventful – a birthday, a picnic, a visit to the beach, a pose by the garden wall – Morrissey gets under the skin of family history and teases out confusion, deception, delusion, and unconditional love. Because each photo is titled with a very specific date (August 8th, 1982; September 4th, 1972), the work stakes a stubborn claim on the truth while inviting us to share both the fantasy and the anxiety.