An Unreachable Country. A Long Way To Go – Heather & Ivan Morrison

Portsmouth & Southsea will be transformed this summer by An Unreachable Country. A Long Way To Go, an extraordinary two-site exhibition by Heather & Ivan Morison. Known for their larger public works, the artists create events and spaces that encourage viewers to question the situation and their participation.

Luna Park, a giant dinosaur sculpture sited on the waterfront at Southsea Common, is inspired by Professor Jim Jensen’s discovery of bones in the 1970s. He believed them to have belonged to ‘Ultrasauros’, the biggest dinosaur that ever lived, but it was later revealed that these fossils came from two different species of dinosaur, and Ultrasauros was in fact a fiction.

Luna Park blurs the boundaries between fantasy and reality and allows Jensen’s myth to come alive. But the huge 16 metre tall sculpture, transforming the skyline is more than a dinosaur with integrated BBQ and picnic facilities – it is a meeting place, a shelter, a temporary landmark, a place to congregate night or day, a space for everyone, a rallying point, a new symbol for the city. Heather & Ivan Morison’s astonishing work, incongruous in the landscape, encourages the viewer to pause and question their surroundings.

At aspex Heather & Ivan Morison will present a new mixed media installation that expands the narratives that surround Luna Park. An Unreachable Country. A Long Way To Go explores how things may transcend their given forms, to create the vehicles for us to journey beyond this fragile and temporal world.

Southsea Common will be the first home for Luna Park. It will then travel to Colchester in association with Firstsite and to Cardiff with Chapter. for Luna Park is a Chapter initiative that has been commissioned in collaboration with Safle through the Stiwdio Safle programme, aspex Portsmouth and Firstsite Colchester. The project has received generous financial support from Safle, The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Arts Council of Wales, Arts Council England through Sustain and is part-financed by the European Union.