Morgan Quaintance, 'I'll Always Remember...'

Using the practical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as an interpretative framework, artist and filmmaker Morgan Quaintance’s exhibition presents a single, multifaceted body of work comprising photography, sculptural intervention and moving image. I’ll Always Remember… extends from themes present in a significant new film by Quaintance, titled 'Bourdieu', in which the French sociologist’s analytical tools (specifically his notion of reflexivity) are used as prompts guiding an exploration of the artist’s childhood experience living between London and Chicago. Pulling together image, text and material references including documentation of Chicago housing project the Robert Taylor Homes, vernacular fashions of early Chicago street gangs, Bourdieu’s fieldwork and photography in Algeria, advertorial from Ebony magazine, and independent biography, Quaintance deploys key individual images, objects and symbols to produce a complex, singular visual language that is at once familiar, remote, abstract, and indexical.

Morgan Quaintance’s practice eschews set themes. However, interests in the human condition, the cultic milieu, counterculture, ethnography and African-American, Afro-Caribbean, British, and East Asian histories are all mainstays. His work has been shown and exhibited at festivals and institutions including MOMA, New York; Konsthall C, Stockholm; Courtisane Film Festival, Ghent; and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton. He is the recipient of a number of awards for his work, most recently the 2025 Film London Jarman Award.

Alice Butler is Creative Director and co-founder of aemi. She is a film programmer, curator, lecturer, and writer. She has curated exhibitions and film seasons at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon; IFI, Dublin; and Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin.

Morgan Quaintance exhibition I'll Always Remember... takes place at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios 02 October -22 November 2026.