COLCHESTER, UK.-The University Gallery at the University of Essex presents Trish Morrissey - Seven Years, on view through December 16, 2005. In a series of elaborately staged portraits, Morrissey works closely with her elder sister to impersonate family members (both real and imagined) and re-enact memories familiar to all of us - childhood birthdays or holidays at the sea-side. The resulting series of colour photographs is entitled Seven Years, referring to the age gap between Morrissey and her sister. In contrast to most family photos, the people in her images rarely smile; this allows the viewer to concentrate on the gestures and body language which reveal hidden tensions between family members. The photos are at once nostalgic and unsettling. Accompanying the photographs are two new video works Eighteen and Forty-Five and Eleven and Three-Quarters.

Seven Years consists of large-scale color photographs that deconstruct the trope of family photography by meticulously mimicking it. In the series, the title of which refers to the age gap between the artist and her elder sister, Morrissey functions as director, author and actor, staging herself and her sibling in tightly controlled, fictional mis en scene based on the conventions of family snapshots.

In order to construct images that appear to be authentic family photographs from the 1970s and 1980s, Morrissey uses period clothing and props, both her own and others, and the setting of her family's house in Dublin. She and her sister assume different characters and roles in each image, utilizing body language to reveal the subtext of psychological tensions inherent in all family relations. The resulting photographs isolate telling moments in which the unconscious leaks out from behind the façade of the face and into the minute gestures of the body.

Trish Morrissey was born in Dublin in 1967, and currently lives and works in London. Her work has been exhibited abroad ­ including solo shows in 2004 at both the Impressions Gallery in York and the Gardner Arts Centre at the University of Sussex ­ and is included in the collection of the Museum of Fine Art in Houston. Morrissey received an Arts Council London Research and Development Grant in 2004 and was a finalist for the 1999 John Kobal Portrait Award given by the National Portrait Gallery in London.