One of the vital eye-catching centerpieces of The South Bought One thing to Say is a sitting room set up honoring the Black, woman-centered popular culture of artist Morgan Newton’s youth.
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It’s not hyperbole to name Morgan Newton certainly one of immediately’s most enjoyable rising Houston artists. The second present of her profession, The South Bought One thing to Say at Sanman Studios downtown, reveals that she’s already properly on her approach to sometime being talked about in the identical breath as native visible arts legends like JooYoung Choi, Trenton Hancock Doyle, and Rachel Hecker. She presents an assured, cohesive imaginative and prescient that deliberately bridges cultural gaps between the experiences of Black girls within the South and viewers who acknowledge their very own lives within the terrestrial and human geographies in her works. Night time skies stuffed with planets and stars convey this theme collectively, which is on view till February 1.
“I wished to do the entire common background with it, as a result of once I was youthful, I used to go to my nice aunt and uncle in South Park,” Newton says. “He had a telescope, and we might take a look at the celebs over South Park…I used to be considering, ‘What if I acquired to create my very own universe and present individuals what that seemed like?’”
In Newton’s universe, her household dances ebulliently of their kitchen. Ladies exhibit their braids, jewellery, and units as planets unto themselves, lit from behind by glowing starlight. Houston iconography knits collectively in celebratory collages stuffed with swangas, Timmy Chan indicators, Celebration Station, hen and waffles, and different reminders of our metropolis’s shared cultural touchpoints.
Newton performs household house movies alongside music movies and interviews with missed lady rappers and hip-hop artists.
She grew up right here, her recollections principally recalling the late ’90s and early ’00s. Newton additionally consulted together with her mom throughout the creation course of to include her personal childhood favorites. Together with the voices of different generations provides extra layers of familiarity and group. The artist’s favourite moments when the present opened concerned individuals coming as much as her and exclaiming how completely happy they have been to see their very own beloved Houston hallmarks included in her work.
The South Bought One thing to Say is a multimedia present, with 16 complete works protecting video, printmaking, textiles, collage, and set up alongside portray; Newton majored within the latter at Howard College. Her first solo present, Once I Consider House, was held at Midtown’s Neighborhood Artists’ Collective in January 2023. It targeted completely on her work, which noticed Newton trying inward and inspecting themes of loving and accepting herself and discovering her paths towards private development.
Gratitude blossoms from that fertile artistic soil, and she or he carried her entire coronary heart to her Sanman artist residency, which ran from February till December 2024. Newton developed The South Bought One thing to Say throughout her time on the studio and challenged herself to experiment in media past the acquainted paint. Branching out was her method of honoring the influential individuals and popular culture figures—primarily girls—who encourage her.
“With this explicit topic, you need to use imagery. I’ve by no means finished [mixed media] earlier than,” Newton says. “Though I did get form of discouraged, it caught. I feel I’m going to try to strive new issues.”
The place Once I Consider House emphasised her self-reflection, The South Bought One thing to Say facilities those that led her on that path. The present is called after a quote by André 3000 on the 1995 Supply Awards, which grew to become a clarion name for rappers from Atlanta, Memphis, Houston, and throughout the South who felt overshadowed by an business extra enamored with expertise in New York and Los Angeles. It’s a sentiment Newman additionally associates with Southern Black girls each out and in of the music world.
“I wished to cowl Black Southern womanhood. I additionally began fascinated by Black Southern girls rappers and the way they don’t get their simply due or their credit score within the business. So I used to be like, ‘What if I mixed a gratitude exhibition to them?’” she says.
Morgan Newton’s collage work celebrates so most of the individuals, locations, and cultural touchstones that make Houston Houston.
One of the vital hanging items within the present occupies a complete nook of the gallery. With partitions painted purple in distinction to the gallery’s typical white, it seems as a welcoming sitting room, with a chair (please don’t sit on the artwork), finish desk, and posters of the rappers, musicians, actresses, fashions who—and flicks that—made her proud to be a Black lady: Eve’s Bayou, Tatyana Ali, Magnificence Store, Tyra Banks, and plenty of others. The top desk pulls double responsibility as a shrine to the Southern girls rappers who’ve since handed: Holly Thomas (Megan Thee Stallion’s mom), Memphis’s Gangsta Boo and Princess Loko, and Magnolia Shorty from New Orleans.
Subsequent to the sitting room set up hangs an ethereal sequence of cyanotypes—a printing course of that creates a cyan blue picture—depicting CD liner notes from girls who constructed rap careers from themselves within the South. Printed on cotton, these works waft gently within the gallery’s AC, a intentionally ghostly spectacle illustrating how girls’s creativity is allowed to fade away into the background.
There’s a definite emphasis on Houstonians on this work, reminiscent of Enjoli from Screwed Up Click on and Carmen Ruth, also referred to as 380 Dat Girl. Newton interviewed most of the dwelling performers for this exhibition to verify they consented to being featured, in addition to to catalogue their tales and educate herself on essential voices in rap and hip-hop, even flying out to Atlanta to fulfill Ruth in particular person. Lez Moné and Cl’Che’, who additionally characteristic within the cyanotypes and collages, confirmed as much as the present’s opening to participate within the celebrations. It’s a degree of delight for Newton, to have the ability to thank her influences in particular person. They gave her the arrogance to convey her assured, completed imaginative and prescient to Sanman Studios, and past right into a promising visible arts profession to control within the years to come back.
“Seeing their processes and seeing how they advocate for themselves and dealing laborious… I’m attempting to consider how they navigated life with their artistry. It is extremely inspiring. Seeing the wonder in that’s one thing that I wished to spotlight,” Newton says. “So it helps me as an artist, studying to advocate for myself and being protecting over my issues, proper? And likewise wanting to acknowledge them, since they weren’t actually acknowledged.”
Know Earlier than You Go
The South Bought One thing to Say can be operating at Sanman Studios till February 1. Admission is free. For extra info, go to the gallery’s web site.
