A members-only exhibition at the Royal Geographic Society, Skin Maps: Semi-Permeable Cartography, features “collages and reworkings of historic maps” by artist Steph Morris. From Morris’s website:
The new collages by Steph on display arose from an intimate study of historic maps, many from the Royal Geographical Society collections, including seventeenth-century vellum portolan charts and historic atlases. They provided both material and inspiration. Handling maps hand-drawn on calf skin led him to consider the similarities between these depictions of landmasses and seas and the bodies of mammals, especially humans, with their liquids and solids, entry and exit points, contours and incursions; it seemed as if the cartographers had explored those similarities too. Many of the historic atlases he examined also contain illustrations of battles on land and sea, reminders of conflict and bloodshed which felt far from historic. The critical bodily health of the world’s lands and seas was also hard to ignore.
His process involved exploring anagrams, negatives/positives, shadows, inversions and reflections and the simple syntax of collage: what happens when you place disparate things alongside each other to create a new grammar. As well as maps from previous centuries, this frequently involved material such as cookbooks and gardening manuals from previous decades.
Non-members take heart: guided tours of the exhibition, open to the public, take place on 28 July (i.e., tomorrow) and 11 August (free, registration required). Also, Morris is holding a collage-map art workshop on 31 July (free, registration). And you can see highlights of the exhibition at Morris’s Instagram account (see above).
Skin Maps opened on 12 June and closes 16 August 2026. [Katie Parker]