jeremy gardiner drawn to the coast
jeremy gardiner drawn to the coast
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jeremy gardiner: drawn to the coast
In recent years, through a series of exhibitions and publications, Jeremy Gardiner has emerged as one of the most interesting and innovative of our landscape painters. The group of 40 new works on paper which constitutes this show continues to explore his preoccupation with the coastal landscape of southern England, and demonstrates the richness of a subject which draws him back again and again. There can never be one definitive statement about a landscape, and these new works investigate some of the alternative readings that Gardiner proposes through the pursuit of other visual options, other formal possibilities. The poet Joseph Brodsky wrote (of Venice): ‘Water equals time and provides beauty with its double.’ The incoming or retreating tide, a mesh of waves and ripples, does not reflect the earth and sky with such honesty as more stilled bodies of water do, but Gardiner includes reflections in his paintings – large areas of echo and repeated presence. He paints a composite version of the sea, full of hidden depth, quartered by small boats, a sounding board of colour and contrast. Likewise, he paints a composite of the land, not only in terms of its geological and human history, but in terms of its appearance at different times of day and in different seasons. Although these paintings are in a sense snapshots, they contain not one single moment (as a photograph would) but a layering of different moments
and meanings. The key word to describe Gardiner’s work is lamination: a process of working closely, dependent upon the fixing together of layers of material in an attempt to produce an equivalent to the way we experience the world around us. Gardiner has been working on paper for decades; for instance, he recorded a 2001 trip to the miniature archipelago of Fernando De Noronha in Brazil on the same handmade cotton rag paper (640gsm) he uses today. But more recently we have grown used to seeing the paintings he makes on panels of poplar ply. These remarkable objects look almost like woodblocks, and he could undoubtedly print from their carved relief surfaces if he wished to submit them to a press. Instead of doing that, as a printmaker Gardiner prefers to make long often horizontal intaglio monoprints which convey to the viewer a sense of movement and the passage of time. Whatever medium he employs in the studio, he always begins working outside in the landscape with pencil line drawings made in front of the motif. Right from the start he is dealing with abstraction, for he thinks of his lines as Euclidean vectors, with a direction and a length, rather than in a simple descriptive capacity. If already this terminology seems to speak of maths, geometry or engineering, rather than art, then the breadth of Gardiner’s
interests has been effectively suggested. He is fascinated, for instance, in geomorphology – the study of the physical features of the surface of the earth and their relation to its geological structures – and always keen to investigate new technologies. Yet his principal process remains a traditional one: applying pigment to a support, whether paper or panel. He sees no contradiction between his adherence to the great tradition of Western painting and his use of the very latest technological discovery. Each work consists of two sheets of thick handmade paper, one superimposed over the other, allowing him two layers to paint and cut into, a depth of support from which to excavate his findings. Actually, what looks like excavation is in fact cut paper (the ‘negative’ sheet on the top) layered onto the second sheet (or positive) below. Although Gardiner dislikes the term collage, he does glue paper to paper to make these paintings. The process is one of building up rather than cutting down (as he does into a poplar panel), but the procedure is a similar one of accumulating and editing information. In places he has ‘buttered on’ the paint, as he puts it, laying down a thick sensuous wedge of paint which dries into an island of pigment. These slabby passages of paint reference the work of such European Modernists as Nicolas de Staël and Roger Hilton, and bring another level of facture and
content to already complex sheets. They are in essence abstracts with topographical attitude – a new interpretation of landscape which involves a very personal combination of the formal and the descriptive. Gardiner evokes the spirit of place, its mood, with a mixture of broad-brush treatment and contrastingly fine areas of drawing. Some are densely detailed with hairline drawing, such as the St Ives group, others are more obviously abstract with larger areas of colour carrying the emotional charge of the image; all are immensely atmospheric. One of his characteristic materials is Jesmonite, a kind of acrylic resin much used in sculpture and modelling (also by palaeontologists for casting), which he deploys mixed with pigment or on its own. He might cut stencils to limit the application of paint or skim the surface of the paper with Jesmonite, which absorbs the paint and dries instantly, having the effect of ‘freezing the gesture’, as Gardiner explains. Equally, he might apply colour with a loaded sponge; whichever his strategy, he employs sensitive but strongly controlled colour: lovely variations on pink and green, red and yellow, or blue and ochre. The range is wide from, for instance, lakes of concentrated red to the palest diluted wash of pink staining the white paper. Thin washes are flooded over the pictorial terrain. Gardiner’s surfaces are fully animated and articulated first by drawing and then
by the atmospherics of colour and texture. His is a highly creative use of line in conjunction with colour-area and stain and splash. The surfaces are embossed and entrenched, incised with precision drawing (Gardiner is adept with a scalpel), the cliffs and coastlines, the buildings and streets cut into the paper and creating the effect of a moulded surface or a sculpture in low relief. He is keen on the fruitful contrast between the built environment and the natural context, focusing on architecture but also on the movement of tides, the sprung rhythms of rock and earth. The hidden structures of landscape are ably suggested by the processes he uses: in his drawings he goes beneath the surface, much as he reveals the unseen procedures in nature, the history of the rock through its strata. The subjects here fall into five main categories: Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, and Lundy. Gardiner delineates the massed roof-tops of St Ives, but focuses here and there, not trying to paint the detail of all, but picking out a satisfactory pictorial pattern from the clusters of information available. Some images are more abstract, such as The Ocean Roar, Godrevy (cat 5) or Morning Walk, The Lizard (cat 1). Devon is another inspiring subject. The Last of the Light, Lynmouth Lighthouse (cat 24) is quite brushy in attack, achieving a lovely modulation of colour through red
and pink to grey. Aside from the architecture of dwelling or lighthouse Gardiner identifies field patterns, elevations, contours. By accessing information from LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), a method of surveying which uses pulsed laser light to illuminate the earth and construct high resolution maps, Gardiner can include contour elevations of the landscape in his pictures. In Rocky Coast, Hartland Point, (cat 22) lucidly-placed patches of blue in lovely uneven shapes are positioned for maximum effect (Gardiner is an expert at shape invention); elsewhere a sea-mist of Jesmonite brings a cool bloom to the surface. Note the blue and yellow shading into violet and eau de Nil in Glimmering Sea, Bull Point, (cat 15) or the original ways of handling green, that tricky colour for the English, in Transparent Seas, Bull Point, (cat 18) Gardiner brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘sea green’. For a different approach, look at Autumnal Sky, Lundy, (cat 32) with its patterns and projections. As Rimbaud wrote in Illuminations: ‘A very deep green and blue invade the picture. Unhitching somewhere near a patch of gravel.’ Coast and sea and sky all act together to create a particular place and type of country with its own climate, its special features and outlines. Not just the outward appearance of Lundy, but its deep down essence is conjured forth. Geology in Gardiner’s work is a very present power, not
some dry and dusty discipline belonging to the past. Notice the way rock strata still seem to be fizzing with the abrupt energy of their creation – the crashing of tectonic plates against each other, the rearing up of rock masses. This is living landscape, still in the process of development and change, however long that might take. And of course the implication is to see man’s presence in this evolving landscape at its true value. How we need this freedom from self-importance! In Gardiner’s paintings we find the same sensation as when walking among mountains – of man’s staggering insignificance, and the consequent sense of liberation at being so small and so transitory an episode in the greater scheme of things. The painter and printmaker Michael Rothenstein (in conversation with Peter Fuller, Modern Painters, 1990) spoke of artists trying always to capture a mood of excitement – ‘an implied violence of structure’. He also spoke of colour violence, and both kinds of impulse can be seen as key aspects of Modernism, and certainly as characteristic of Gardiner’s work. Later in the same interview, Rothenstein talked of Graham Sutherland’s early Welsh drawings, identifying what made them so special: ‘His imagination got so entwined with particular shapes in what he was seeing that outside and inside met.’ This observation is highly appropriate to a discussion of Jeremy Gardiner’s
work. Looking at a painting such as Against the Tide at The Needles, (cat 31) we see the meeting of inner and outer worlds, imaginative discernment enlarging stringent observation, and personal experience underlying all. Gardiner’s distinctive laminar landscapes reveal their layered meanings only over time – this is not instant art, but art which discloses itself gradually. Its richness matches the complexity of the world it seeks to evoke, and offers back an interpretation of it which is both personal and penetrating. More than 50 years ago, Peter Lanyon wrote: ‘I believe that landscape, the outside world of things and events larger than ourselves, is the proper place to feel our deepest meanings.’ That still remains true for a number of our finest contemporary landscape painters, and Jeremy Gardiner is prominent among them.
Andrew Lambirth July 2017
jeremy gardiner drawn to the coast cornwall cat 1 – 11 devon cat 12 – 26 dorset cat 27 – 28 isle of wight cat 29 – 31 lundy cat 32 – 40
WORKS
All works: watercolour with jesmonite and acrylic on handmade cotton rag paper 12 x 17 ins (30.5 x 43 cms) framed: 18 x 23 ins (45.5 x 58 cms) signed, titled and dated 2017
jg 2
Overlooking the Harbour, St Ives
jg 8
Spring Tide, St Anthony’s
jeremy gardiner
Biography Born 1957, MĂźnster, Germany Lives and works in Bath and London
2013 2010
2008 2007 2003 2002 1998 1995 1988 1987 1985 1984 1981
Awards and Fellowships First Prize, ING Discerning Eye for Pendeen Lighthouse Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Award Artist in Residence Nottingham University Arts Council England Research and Development Award Arts and Humanities Research Council Grant Peterborough Art Prize National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts Grant New Forms Grant, Cultural Affairs Council, Florida Florida Council on the Arts Fellowship Prix Ars Prize, Austria New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Major Works Grant, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities Harkness Fellowship Churchill Fellowship John Minton Scholarship, Royal College of Art
1979 Yorkshire Arts, Artist in Industry Fellowship 1978 Midland Bank Drawing Prize Hatton Scholarship, Newcastle University 1977 John Christie Scholarship, Newcastle University Northern Arts Exhibition Award
2016 2015 2014 2013
2010
Solo Exhibitions Pillars of Light, Paisnel Gallery, London Jeremy Gardiner, Jurassic Coast, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath Jeremy Gardiner, ING, City of London Jeremy Gardiner, Intaglio Monoprints, Pratt Gallery, Pratt Institute of Art and Design, Brooklyn, NY Cornish Monoprints, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives Exploring the Elemental, Paisnel Gallery, London Unfolding Landscape, Kings Place Gallery, London Jeremy Gardiner, University of Northumbria Art Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne Jeremy Gardiner, Monoprints, Level 39, 1 Canada Water, London A Panoramic View, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester in association with Paisnel Gallery, London
2010 Light Years, Jurassic Coast, Lighthouse, Poole Centre for the Arts Atlantic Edge, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives Jeremy Gardiner, Campden Gallery, Chipping Campden 2008 The Coast Revisited, Paisnel Gallery, London 2007 Arvor, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives Atrium Gallery, Bournemouth University Foss Fine Art, London Along the Coast, Campden Gallery, Chipping Campden 2006 59th Aldeburgh Festival, Foss Fine Art Midtsommerfest, Tysvaer, Norway Jurassic Coast, Black Swan Arts, Frome, Somerset 2004 Archipelago, Gallery 286, London Northcote Gallery, London Maltby Gallery, Winchester 2003 Purbeck Light Years, Lighthouse, Poole Centre for the Arts 2001 Maltby Gallery, Winchester 2000 Ballard Point, Belgrave Gallery, London 1991 Fine Arts Museum of Long Island 1989 Centro Cultural Candido Mendes, Rio de Janeiro Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo
1987 Compton Gallery, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1985 George Sherman Gallery, Boston University 1984 Galerie 39, London 1983 Heuristic Journeys, General Electric, Hirst Research Centre, London 1980 Parnham House, Dorset
2017
2016
2015
2014
Selected Group Exhibitions Capture the Castle, Southampton City Art Gallery Coastal Connections, The Otter Gallery, University of Chichester Secret, Royal College of Art Facing History, Victoria & Albert Museum, London Shorelines, Artists on the South Coast, St Barbe Museum Secret, Royal College of Art Nature, Politics and Science, DLI Museum, Durham The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London The Newcastle Connection, University of Northumbria Art Gallery Songs of Nature, Foss Fine Art Ways of Looking, Aldeburgh Gallery
2013 The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries Mapping the Way, Walford Mill Crafts, Dorset Haysom Quarry, Purbeck Art Weeks, Dorset Summer Show, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives 2012 The Art Stable, Dorset Coast Unearthed, Bridport Arts Centre, Dorset Intuition and Ingenuity, Phoenix Square, Leicester 2010 Works on Paper, Camden Gallery, UK 3D2D, Edinburgh Printmakers, Scotland 2010 Earthscapes, Geology + Geography, Bridport Arts Centre, Dorset (touring exhibition) 105th Annual exhibition, Bath Society of Artists, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath 2009 Imaginalis, Chelsea Art Museum, New York City Mapping the Coast, Dorset County Museum (touring exhibition) 157th Autumn Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol 2008 Salon de Yutaka, Kanazawa, Japan Art de Art, Osaka, Japan Artzone, Kyoto, Japan Orie Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2008 Gallery Mai, Tokyo, Japan Gallery Atos, Okinawa, Japan Acostage Gallery, Takamatsu, Japan 61st Aldeburgh Festival Streaming Museums, Federal Plaza, Melbourne, Australia 2007 A Postcard from St Ives, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives, Thompson’s Gallery, London 2006 59th Aldeburgh Festival Art Loan Collection, Bournemouth University Ancient landscapes, Midtsommerfest, Tysvaer, Norway Time Passes, Renscombe Farm, Worth Matravers, Dorset Originals, Mall Galleries, London 2005 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition Art Loan Collection, Winchester University 2004 New Media Arts, First Beijing International Exhibition, China Works on Paper, Sears Peyton Gallery, New York Hunting Art Prize, Royal College of Art, London 2003 Landscape, Campden Gallery, Chipping Campden Peterborough Art Prize, Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery Digital Terrains, Deluxe Gallery, London
2002 Laing Landscape Competition, Mall Galleries, London Quiet Waters, Poole Study Gallery A Pelican in the Wilderness, Holburne Museum of Art, Bath ISEA, Nagoya, Japan 2001 Maltby Gallery, Winchester Laing Landscape Competition, Mall Galleries, London Art Loan Collection, Bournemouth University Belgrave Gallery, London The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London 2000 Neuhoff Gallery, New York City 1999 CADE, Historical Museum, Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia Belloc Lowndes Fine Art, Chicago Gamut, Colville Place Gallery, London 147th Autumn Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol 1998 Landmark, Atrium Gallery, Bournemouth University Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1997 Isle of Purbeck, Silicon Gallery, Philadelphia 1996 Digital Salon, Visual Arts Museum, School of Visual Arts, New York Multimedia Artworks, University of Ghent, Belgium
Collections Barclays Wealth Management, Poole BNP Paribas, London Bournemouth University Art Collection, Bournemouth Centrebridge, London Davis Polk & Wardwell, Paris Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, Milan Gaz de France, London GDF Suez, London General Electric, London GlaxoSmithKline, London Goodwin Proctor, London Government Art Collection, London Greenlight Capital, London Imperial College Art Collection, London ING, London Lawrence Graham LLP, London LGV, London NYNEX Corporate Collection, USA Pallant House Gallery, Chichester Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery, Peterborough Peter Taylor and Associates, London Pinsent Masons, London Rathbones, London Rank Xerox, London Royal National Lifeboat Institution, Poole
Royal College of Art Collection, London St Thomas’ Hospital Collection, London Swindon Museum and Art Gallery Tudor Capital, London University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne Victoria and Albert Museum, London Watso Wyatt, London Films 2016 Pillars of Light, Edge 2 Edge Productions 2014 A Page in the Book of Time, World Out There Productions 2013 Jeremy Gardiner, Unfolding Landscape, Aquiline Productions
jeremy gardiner drawn to the coast
Published in 2017 by Paisnel Gallery isbn 978-0-9931746-6-7 Paisnel Gallery 9 Bury Street St James’s London sw1y 6ab Telephone: 020 7930 9293 Email: info@paisnelgallery.co.uk www.paisnelgallery.co.uk © Paisnel Gallery. Text, Andrew Lambirth 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 without first seeking the written permission of the copyright holders and of the publisher. Photography: Paul Tucker Photography Studio and plein air portraits of the artist © Veronica Falcão 2017 Design: www.axisgraphicdesign.co.uk Print: Graphius, Ghent
Cover: cat 1 Morning Walk, The Lizard (detail) Front endpaper detail: cat 3 After the Storm, Godrevy Back endpaper detail: cat 37 Yellow Sea, Lundy
9 bury street st james’s london sw1y 6ab www.paisnelgallery.co.uk