This work is on show as part of R.M.Williams’ Artist in Residence exhibition program (345 George Street, Sydney) until late September 2025. Available for delivery or collection after this time.

Morgan Stokes’ 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.

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, spontaneous and considered, their textures and tones pushing the viewer into an encounter with the unexpected.