Morlita’s Cats and Dogs at Nitroglobus in Second Life

It’s been over a decade since I first encountered Morlita Quan’s art in Second Life. At the time, she was one of the recipients in the Linden Endowment for the Arts 4th round of land grants to artists, and I was immediately struck by her work. Over the course of the next few years I encountered her art over and again at various festivals and collaborative art events, but it was not until 2016 that I was able to blog about it as a solo exhibition, when I visited Organic Geometry, presented at the Art Gallery the Eye under her physical world artistic name, MorlitaM. Since then, I’ve always been attracted to her exhibitions whenever presented, finding myself deeply attracted to her work, which often blends the use of geometric and organic forms in unique and captivating abstracted ways.

However, her latest exhibition – currently being hosted by Dido Haas at her Nitroglobus Roof Gallery – offers a glimpse of another side of Morlita’s life in addition to that of an artist and musician. Cats and Dogs is something of a challenge set by Dido – a long time friend of Morlita’s – to produce a themed exhibition. Dido tends to present these to folk every so often, and they are often particularly hard to fulfil, as Dido has a knack for both shining a light on a side of someone’s SL or physical life (or both) which is seldom seen, and easing them out of their established comfort zone (and I speak here from knowledge – Dido hand me such a challenge well over a year ago, and I still have yet to try and rise to it to a point where I have confidence in the results!).

For Morlita, the challenge came in the form putting together an exhibition focused on her work in taking in and caring for abandoned and mistreated animals, notably dogs.

While this might sound easy, it’s not necessarily so. For a start, should the images be of animals taken in Morlita’s physical world life, and if so, how should they be shot? What needs to be done to eliminate too much personal information from accidentally slipping into an image? Which animals should be featured? Should these be individual or group shots? And if not images of actual animals she is caring for, that what should be offered? shots of random animals, perhaps caught on the street? or should the images be drawn from digital sources – SL and elsewhere? And so on. When you add the fact that Morlita works in the realms of the conceptual and abstract, the melding of ideas and thoughts, both in her art and in her music, then the task becomes even more of a challenge – how do such approaches mix with the practicalities of animal welfare and care?

With Cats and Dogs the answer to that last question would appear to be quite eloquently. Cats and Dogs is at once both a collection of conceptual pieces, oft with abstractions of meaning, and of portraits and studies of cats and dogs which can be taken purely on that level, depending upon your outlook mood.

Some of the themes woven into the images will at once appear obvious to anyone what has owned a cat or a dog (perhaps most recognisably in Ego, while in others the layering of ideas might be more nuanced (as in the highlighting of the eyes in a on some, capturing the notions of intelligence and understanding within our furred friends). In others still, the potential for meaning / interpretation is even more nuanced, if one so wishes to make it so – such as GP_MorlitaM (9) – or can simply be seen as an image of an animal enjoying life (and splashing through water). These are pieces which also blend Morlita’s love of the animals with her love of geometry and organic forms, each piece bringing all of these aspects together in a unique expression of love and understanding.

Supported by 3D elements by Adwehe, Cats and Dogs is something of a very different exhibition for Nitroglobus; one that is obviously very personal to the artist – but also one fully in keeping with Dido’s tenet of encouraging her artists to present something which engages the eye and the mind. My apologies to her and Morlita to getting to this blog post a little later than is normally the case with exhibitions at Nitroglobus – and also to Dido for the fact that I still haven’t met the challenge passed to me back in late 2022!

SLurl Details

• Nitroglobus Roof Gallery (Sunshine Homestead, rated Moderate)