THE SHOW I HAVE CURATED ‘WE EACH HAVE OUR OWN LANDSCAPE’ WILL BE ON AT LEWISHAM ARTHOUSE 24TH-28TH JULY 2019
We Each Have Our Own Landscape reflects a personal element in landscape. Each artist explores a sense of place as a metaphor for the exploration of the psyche. Hypnotic waves that peak and fall in a repeating visual mantra, horizons that speak of a future… almost fictional, landscape employed as a stage, nature anthropomorphised.
The title of this show references the idea of locating one’s self both within a present, remembered or imagined landscape and also the emotional landscape we each inhabit. We are primed by Romanticism; offering landscape as an opportunity to create a context for oneself; it is at once a place and a visual representation of an emotional state.
Building on this romantic tradition of the sublime, there is an established trajectory that considers the mind-scape. Kant established the idea that the connection between nature and man, is man’s imagination. Landscape offers an orthodoxy that is familiar, that instantly brings the viewer into the understanding that they are participating in the work. The viewer summons a philosophical convention to the reading of the work.
However living in the Anthropocene age we humans require too much of nature… we imbue landscape with an artifice that it clearly can not support. Therefore we are all on the verge of processing a shift in our relationship with nature.
I AM VERY PLEASED TO HAVE BEEN SELECTED BY BRIAN GRIFFITHS FOR THE CREEKSIDE OPEN 2019
The exhibition will run 19th May to 2nd June, APT Gallery, London. Prize-giving Saturday 11th May 2019, 3pm. creeksideopen.org
NOVEMBER 2018, RESIDENCY AT THE BOWLING HARBOUR PROJECT WITH LODESTONE CREATIVE IN WEST DUMBARTONSHIRE, SCOTLAND
I had a fantastic time at Bowling Harbour in West Dumbartonshire and I would like to thank Lodestone Creative for selecting me for this opportunity.
I very much enjoyed absorbing myself in the brooding November Scottish landscape. The location of my residency was on the edge of Bowling; a small town at the foot of the Kilpatrick Hills on the shores of the river Clyde. This area was once alive with the manufacture of boats, whisky and glass however it is currently struggling with the social and economic affects of post-industrialism.
The pivotal piece of work I made there was a photographic series titled ‘In Search of Horatio’ (image below), which referenced two other artists; Horatio McCulloch and Bas Jan Ader. During my time there I researched paintings of the area at Kelvingrove Art Museum; specifically pre-industrial landscapes from the Romantic era. My research had led me to McCulloch’s painting ‘The Clyde from Dalnottar Hill’ 1858. This view being in such close proximity to the location of my residency was obviously intriguing and I decided to attempt to find the spot where McCulloch had stood to paint.
I quickly realised that this would be difficult due to the urbanity of the landscape now. Indeed the location Google Maps gave me was largely obscured by houses, however the main difference to the view was the Erskine Bridge, an addition that has spanned the Clyde since 1971.
Wondering around I attempted to see McCulloch’ view but with little success. I decided to walk onto the bridge to see the view, it would be a lot higher than McCulloch’s viewpoint but the only way to properly see the vista beyond. I approached the bridge with some unease as along with its height and oppressive proximity to speeding cars it has a notorious reputation for the large number of suicides committed from it. Indeed on first approach you are met with helpline signs and SOS phones. However as I walked across the bridge McCulloch’s view was finally coming into view between the horizontal barrier bars. This ‘suicide barrier’ was recently installed after the deaths of two teenage girls who apparently held hands as they leaped from the bridge, captured headlines.
Finally peering between these bars McCulloch’s view was visible and standing on the bridge it appeared strangely unchanged, but the context was overwhelming; that this was the last glimpsed view of the suicidal held a certain poignancy when framed within the context of the Romantic era and the legacy of the sublime.
The search for the sublime is paramount in the work of conceptualist artist Bas Jan Adder and the photographic documentation of my ‘In search of Horatio’ parodies Ader’s ‘In Search of The Miraculous’ (One night in Los Angeles) 1973, in which Ader presented 18 black and white photographs of a walk through the Hollywood Hills to the coast. I thought a lot about Ader; his Fall series and famously his last work whereby he was lost at sea undertaking a voyage in a tiny sailing vessel from America to England.
It is exactly this duality and tension in nature that represents my own interest in the sublime. And high-up staring across at McCulloch’s view whilst listening to the relentless hum of the cars, was a moment that held exactly that.
