Callum Morton

DIRTY OLD TOWN

These works resemble abandoned signs in as much as their use, their language, what they signify, has been removed and erased. But instead of being a rough copy with a gritty skeleton left behind, they are reimagined here with newly assembled and overly complicated structure, pattern and colour.

Exhibition Dates: 22 May – 20 June 2026

The fourteen light works scattered up high through the main gallery are copies of the forms of cheap hotel signs. They are hotels without a specific name, at once generic and hardly noticeable. Hidden spaces for hidden moments.

You need to cast your eyes upwards to see them, crane your neck a little. When we spend most of our time these days with downcast eyes staring at those little screens, this, at the very least, is an opportunity to exercise another muscle.

These works resemble abandoned signs in as much as their use, their language, what they signify, has been removed and erased. But instead of being a rough copy with a gritty skeleton left behind, they are reimagined here with newly assembled and overly complicated structure, pattern and colour.

This is an excess borrowed from the random combinations of the street and indeed I have imagined the gallery, this very particular room, to resemble a public square in a small town.

At the gallery entrance are a series of ten small, close cropped pencil and gouache drawings of nameless doors. Some of these were found down laneways, back entrances in hidden alcoves. Others are doors to utility boxes or doors erased by dense graffiti. In the small gallery a gridded collection of more drawings that range across repeated themes. Water drops, liquid spills, drawn holes in fading and smoke filled skies and comic smoke puffs. All of them intimate something at the edge of things, of our natural resources teetering and delicate.

Through this week with the install crew, we have been humming, whistling and singing that working class anthem ‘Dirty Old Town’ over and over. The song, originally written in 1949 by Ewan MacCall about his hometown of Salford, a heavily industrialized town in North West England, was popularised by Shane MacGowan and The Pogues in 1985. Macgowan’s rasping and raucous lilt, singing about lovers, factory walls, smoke stacks and the old canal, somehow binds this show together, with its combination of sweet longing and gritty lives.

I have been worried about reinventing the cheap and desolate as a bit pretty, but as a friend said quite simply the other day; “There’s nothing wrong with pretty.”

There’s nothing wrong with pretty.

–Callum Morton

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City Lights #6, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
94.5 x 84 x 15 cm

City Lights #6, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
94.5 x 84 x 15 cm

City Lights #9, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
99.5 x 38.5 x 15 cm

City Lights #9, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
99.5 x 38.5 x 15 cm

City Lights #1, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
90.5 x 79.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #1, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
90.5 x 79.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #4, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
30 x 83 x 15 cm

City Lights #4, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
30 x 83 x 15 cm

City Lights #14, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
82 x 62.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #14, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
82 x 62.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #7, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
69.5 x 80 x 12 cm

City Lights #7, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
69.5 x 80 x 12 cm

City Lights #5, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
89.5 x 50.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #5, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
89.5 x 50.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #12, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
130 x 24.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #12, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
130 x 24.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #8, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
106 x 34 x 12 cm

City Lights #8, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
106 x 34 x 12 cm

City Lights #3, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
96 x 32.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #3, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
96 x 32.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #11, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
94.5 x 19 x 15.5 cm

City Lights #11, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
94.5 x 19 x 15.5 cm

City Lights #13, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
34.5 x 66 x 12 cm

City Lights #13, 2026
steel, powder coating, lights
34.5 x 66 x 12 cm

City Lights #10, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
70 x 35 x 12 cm

City Lights #10, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
70 x 35 x 12 cm

City Lights #2, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
33 x 67.5 x 12 cm

City Lights #2, 2026
steel, 2Pac polyurethane, lights
33 x 67.5 x 12 cm

Door #9, 2025
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Door #5, 2025
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

Door #12, 2026
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

Door #10, 2025
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

Door #1, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

Door #3, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

Door #8, 2025
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

Door #2, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

Door #9, 2025
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

Door #7, 2025
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

The Hole Story #8, 2025
pencil and gouache on paper
42 x 30 cm

Smoke #5, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Water #3, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

The Hole Story #12: Space Junk, 2026
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Spill #8, 2025-26
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

The Contest of Ideas #2, 2025
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Water #4, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

The Hole Story #11, 2025
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Spill #1, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Water #5, 2025-26
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

The Whole Story #10 (for DH), 2026
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

The Hole Story #12, 2026
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Spill #4, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Door #11, 2026
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Smoke #4, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

The Hole Story #13, 2026
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Water #2, 2023
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Smoke #7, 2024
pencil and gouache on paper
30 x 42 cm

Callum Morton DIRTY OLD TOWN
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2026

Group Show, SEARCHERS: Graffiti and Contemporary Art
National Art School Gallery, 2026

Callum Morton The Underneath
Gadigal Station Sydney Metro, Sydney, 2024

Callum Morton In Through The Out Door
Market Row and Mullins Street, Sydney, 2024

Group Show, What Does the Jukebox Dream Of?
Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2024

Group Show, The First 40 Years
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2024

Group Show, nightshifts
Buxton Contemporary, 2023

Callum Morton View from a Bridge
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2020

Group Show, State of Play
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2017

Group Show
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2016

Group Show, Solid State
Casula Powerhouse, 2015

Callum Morton Monument Park
New Quay, Docklands, Melbourne, 2015

Callum Morton The Other Side
19th Biennale of Sydney, 2014

Callum Morton The Insides
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2012

Callum Morton Forever Young: 30 Years of the Heide Collection
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2011

Newell Harry Before and After Science
Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, 2010

Group Show, Grotto
The Fundament Foundation, Tilburg, The Netherlands, 2009

Callum Morton Wall to Wall
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2009

Callum Morton SCAPE
Christchurch Biennial, 2009

Callum Morton Hotel
Eastlink Freeway, Melbourne, 2008

Group Show, Summer '07 '08
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2007

Callum Morton Valhalla
52nd Venice Biennale, 2007

Callum Morton Piles, Pools and Projections
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2006

Group Show
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2005

Group Show, If these walls could talk
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2005

Callum Morton Babylonia
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2005

Callum Morton Stonewash
Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibition 2: Tunel-Karakoy, Turkey, 2004

Callum Morton Tomorrow Land
Chandigarh Museum and Art Gallery, India, 2004

Callum Morton Habitat
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003

Group Show, LOCAL +/OR GENERAL
New Canaan, Connecticut, 2003

Group Show, The First 20 Years
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2002

Group Show, Bittersweet
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2002

Callum Morton LOCAL +/OR GENERAL
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2001

Callum Morton Don't Even Ask
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2000

Callum Morton International Style
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1999

Group Show, Every other day
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1998

Callum Morton Cellar
First Floor, Melbourne, 1998

Callum Morton Now & Then
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand, 1997