R.M.Williams Flagship Exhibition Program: Morgan Stokes

Curatorial+Co. is delighted to present a new body of work by multimedia artist Morgan Stokes as part of R.M.Williams’ offsite exhibition program at their Sydney flagship store.

Curated by Curatorial+Co., the exhibition and Artist in Residence program continues, exhibiting a new series of artworks available to view online + in person at their Sydney flagship store. Morgan Stokes is the SIXTH artist to exhibit inside R.M.Williams’ space, where Australian craftsmanship + artisans are celebrated alongside the iconic label.

Morgan Stokes’s R.M.Williams series, Where The Body Ends, delves into the material history of a storied Australian icon, reimagining the interplay of craft, material, and experience. This body of work is both a homage and a critique–a meditation on the tactility and cultural weight of the materials that shape objects and lives. Stokes’ practice, known for its interrogation of the medium of painting, extends here into a realm where craftsmanship meets conceptual exploration. Referencing Josef Albers’ Homage To The Square, Stokes transposes Albers’ chromatic studies into an exploration of material dialogue. Where Albers tested the perception of colour, Stokes shifts the inquiry to surfaces, textures, and the histories they carry.

The works in Where The Body Ends are formal studies in materiality, bridging the traditional components of painting—stretcher bars, cloth, and paint—with remnants of R.M.Williams’ legacy; discontinued lines of leather and suede salvaged from the company’s Adelaide factory. This fusion of artistic and artisanal materials interrogates notions of value and obsolescence, highlighting the liminal space between utility and aesthetics. The leather and suede, imbued with histories of labour and durability, are transformed into surfaces that are at once subdued and bold, rational and irrational, their textures and tones pushing the viewer into an encounter with the unexpected.

Stokes emphasises texture as a point of tension within this body of work. The leather’s rugged tactility confronts the ghostliness of silk, while paint acts as both mediator and disruptor. Each work embodies a negotiation of boundaries—between body and material, utility and ornament, permanence and decay. Through this series, Stokes reframes the relationship between material and maker, history and presence. Where The Body Ends is not only a study of material histories but also a poetic inquiry into the limits and possibilities of form itself, asking how the textures of our lived experience are woven into the things we leave behind.