SAX IMPEY VOYAGE
To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene, Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean; This is not solitude, ‘tis but to hold Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled.
But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel and to possess, And roam alone, the world’s tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; Minions of splendour shrinking from distress! None that, with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued; This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!
‘Solitude’, Lord Byron, 1788 - 1824
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Voyage is a collection of paintings made by Impey since returning last year from a journey by sea from Eastern Australia to Singapore. This physical voyage took him from the Coral Sea through the Torres Strait into the Gulf of Carpentaria, stopping briefly in Darwin. From there, he sailed on across the Arafura Sea into the Timor Sea, sailing on to Bali, then into the Sunda Strait, then northwards past Java to his final destination - a passage through treacherous seas still occupied by pirates, and historically frequented by pioneers on routes of trade and in search of new lands to colonise. The existential pull of such elements is clear, as Impey states: “21st Century mass communication, the relentless, total, banal, vapid tedium of the seeming need to communicate, or be communicated to, all the time, disappears out there on the ocean. A mind can breathe, and observe, and reflect, away from the shrill desperation of a culture that, having forgotten that it is better to say nothing than something about nothing, invents ever-new ways to fill every single space with less and less. So a certain empathy with earlier travellers ensues: the sea is still the sea, as it ever was, direct and uncomplicated, and the stars are not a great deal older. The specific aroma of an incipient landfall is a shared experience with those who have gone before, as is the bending of a sail to the wind, as is the chart... The sea renews the land, and the possibilities for life, for my life, are renewed, enlarged by the landfall after the sea. The land is better for being arrived at, and I am better for arriving.” The paintings in this exhibition follow a variety of themes from contemplative paintings of specific areas of ocean to vast celestial expanses undisturbed in the night sky. This continues with the ‘Constellation’ series, works which could be meditative studies of the stars, or the glint of the sun on the ocean, fleeting images that are at the same time perennial, remaining long after the boat has left those waters. There is also a series of works that incorporate charts and extracts from notebooks. As Impey states: “The chart is a compendium of knowledge, of successive generations of endeavour and experience. I use charts in some of the new work as an acknowledgement of that, and an appreciation of the aesthetic, but most significantly as a personal aide memoir, which combine with logbook notes, painting and photography to provide a specific recollection of time and place.” The monumental ‘Sumba’ refers to the witnessing of plumes of black smoke rising from the islands coastline, darkening a luminous sky – whether an aboriginal burning of the land, a ritualistic ceremony or a tragic forest fire remains unknown but leaving an indelible impression. Although Impey has used photography as source material in the past, many of these new works contain an interesting evolution, incorporating the development of a photographic image within the painting process. Self evident in some works, and entirely obscured in others, the possibilities inherent in the combination have clearly invigorated the artist: “the photograph is not an accurate description of a moment, neither is a painting, nor a memory. But to coalesce these elements within an object, perhaps... it’s a lie to tell a truth.” Slightly separate yet clearly related are a series of beautiful yet eerie paintings of Orford Ness, a feral and remote island just off the Suffolk coast. In the past the area was used as the site of a secret Cold War military testing ground, and now stands as a phantom that seems all the more to illustrate the impotence of our temporary concerns. It would be simplistic, albeit understandable, to view these paintings as a record of this odyssey, but for me these are not paintings of the sea, the land or the stars, they are a reflection of man’s insignificance when faced with the awesome and sublime might of nature and the cosmos. They are a personal ‘rite of passage’ that stand, already, as a ghost of what has been witnessed, been and gone but exist as a monumental human response to the fleetingness of man’s existence. The voyage is life through to its brief and inevitable but defiant end. To face it, and to live it is to be liberated. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote “I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now”. I am sure that such a journey does much to open your eyes, making you very aware of your place within the cosmic order.
Joseph Clarke
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Constellation 4 oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 150 x 150 cm
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Constellation 2 oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 100 x 100 cm
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Constellation oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 100 x 100 cm
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Constellation 3 oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 96 x 61 cm
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Constellation 5 oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 61 x 122 cm
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Sumba Sea oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 122 x 122 cm
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Voice of Wave and Sea oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 61 x 96 cm 16
Consider the sea’s listless chime: Time’s self it is, made audible, The murmur of the earth’s own shell. Secret continuance sublime Is the sea’s end: our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was This sound hath told the lapse of time. No quiet, which is death’s, it hath The mournfulness of ancient life, Enduring always at dull strife. As the world’s heart of rest and wrath, Its painful pulse is in the sands. Lost utterly, the whole sky stands, Grey and not known, along its path. Listen alone beside the sea, Listen alone among the woods; Those voices of twin solitudes Shall have one sound alike to thee: Hark where the murmurs of thronged men Surge and sink back and surge again, Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strown beach And listen at its lips: they sigh The same desire and mystery, The echo of the whole sea’s speech. And all mankind is thus at heart Not anything but what thou art: And Earth, Seas, Man, are all in each.
‘The Sea-Limits’, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828 - 1882
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Dark Sea Circle oil and mixed media on panel 150 x 150 cm
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Moon Sea oil and mixed media on panel 100 x 100 cm
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Chart (South China Sea) oil and mixed media on hydrographic chart on panel 104 x 72 cm 22
Chart (Torres Straits) graphite on hydrographic chart on panel 72 x 110 cm 23
Passing Pulau Bawean oil, mix media and silverprint on panel 61 x 96 cm 24
Chart (Gulf of Carpentaria) oil, mixed media and silverprint on hydrographic chart on panel 72 x 104 cm 25
Chart (Cape York) oil, mixed media and silverprint on hydrographic chart on panel 72 x 110 cm 26
Chart (Lunar Eclipse) oil, mixed media and silverprint on hydrographic chart on panel 72 x 104 cm 27
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Chart (Night Wave) oil, mixed media and silverprint on hydrographic chart on panel 124 x 72 cm
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Sumba oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 244 x 122 cm
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Orford Ness oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 61 x 122 cm
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Orford Ness 2 oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 61 x 122 cm
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Orford Ness 4 oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel 122 x 184 cm
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Wine Sea oil and mixed media on panel 122 x 184 cm
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Collaborations
CV 1969
Born Penzance, Cornwall
1988-91 BA (Hons) Fine Art, Newport
2008
with Red Earth: ‘Longshore Drift’, Suffolk
2007
with Red Earth: ‘Enclosure’, Dorset
2005
with Red Earth: ‘Vanishing Point’, Birling Gap, Sussex with Red Earth: ‘Jalan’, Trafalgar Square, London with Red Earth: ‘Geograph – Trace’, Birling Gap, Sussex
Solo Exhibitions 2004 2009
‘Voyage’, Millennium, St. Ives
2007
‘Sea’, New Millennium Gallery, St Ives
2005
‘Catena’, One0Two Gallery, London
2004
‘Events’, New Millennium Gallery, St Ives
2002
‘Labyrinths’, New Millennium Gallery, St Ives
2000
‘Transition’, Newlyn Art Gallery
with Jony Easterby: Samphire Tower, Samphire Hoe, Dover
Residencies 1997
Kunstbrucke, Berlin
Collections Selected Mixed Exhibitions
Arts Council Collection Warwick University
2009
Mixed Winter, Millennium, St. Ives
Connaught Hotel
London Art Fair, Business Design Centre, Islington
Private collections worldwide
2008
Drawing Show, NSA, Exchange, Penzance
2007
Art Now Cornwall, Tate St Ives The St Ives School 1997 - 2007, Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff
2006
Fragments, Cafe Gallery Projects, London Fragments, Tom Thompson Gallery, Owen Sound, Canada
2003
Starting a Collection, Art First Contemporary Art, London
2002
Constructed, Newlyn Art Gallery
2001
Sax Impey, Richard Nott, Ged Quinn, Fermyn Woods Contemporary Art, Brigstock, Northamptonshire
2009
Voyage, Millennium
2007
Art Now Cornwall, Susan Daniel-McElroy, Tate Publishing Sea, New Millennium Gallery
2006
On the Very Edge of the Ocean, Ben Tufnell, Tate Publishing
2004
Events, New Millennium Gallery
2002
Arts Council Collection Acquisitions, 1989 - 2002
2000
Ark 2000, Dilston Grove Church, London
1999
The New St Ives Artists, Maidstone Museum and Art Gallery
1998
Common Ground: Sax Impey and Richard Nott, The Book Gallery, St Ives
2001
Behind the Canvas, S Brittain / S Cook
1997
Kunstbrucke, Dock 11, Berlin
1998
The Dictionary of Artists in Britain Since 1945, D Buckman
Landmarks, Cafe Gallery Projects, London
1996
Drawing Towards the End of a Century, NSA Publications
1996
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Publications
Drawing Towards the End of a Century, Newlyn Art Gallery.
ARTNSA, NSA Publications Labyrinths, New Millennium Gallery
Another View: Art in St Ives, M Whybrow
“...Travelling long distances by sea, on the other hand, gives us time. Travel is like death in that it requires mourning. The light melancholy of watching a coastline recede is a necessary observance. The caves sucked into the water’s surface by the turning of invisible propellors - each subtly different, each marbling a dissipating track which stretches back, an elastic streamer - becomes hypnotic. They set us adrift on inward voyages where we barely have enough sarcastic energy left to stop ourselves seeing our frail barks upon the vasty deeps as paradigmatic. Such time, such long hovering on the edge of banality, is powerfully restorative. By the time approaching land is announced we are free to be excited. Later, it seems to us that only by having breathed the salt air of loss for long enough are we able to make a properly carefree disembarkation. We have adjusted. Our biological clocks are reset, our homoiothermal balance has altered with the latitude, our internal maps - whose every nautical mile has been felt as travelled - makes sense. Behind us the ocean is criss-crossed with thousands upon thousands of multi coloured streamers, a planet festooned with farewells.”
‘Seven Tenths’, James Hamilton-Paterson
Published by Millennium to coincide with the exhibition ‘Voyage’ by Sax Impey All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers
Printed by Control Print (www.controlprint.co.uk) Photography and portrait of Sax Impey by Andy Hughes (www.andyhughes.net)
ISBN 978-1-905772-28-5
MILLENNIUM Str eet-an-Pol St. Ives Cornwall 01736 793121 m a i l @ m i l l e n n i u m g a l l e r y. c o . u k w w w . m i l l e n n i u m g a l l e r y. c o . u k