'New lines in space'
‘New Lines in Space’
Contemporary
Six Gallery, Manchester
1st - 21st June, 2017
I use the word ‘landscape’
quite a lot in relation to my work, but I’ve always thought that it applies as equally
well to the built environment as it does the natural. The word means, quite
literally the shape of the land around us. So when Simpson Haugh Partners, the
Manchester based firm of architects, asked me about two years ago, to produce a
series of twelve paintings for the central atrium of their forthcoming project,
‘No 1 Spinningfields’, I could see the natural extension of that principle into
uncharted territory.
The only
limitation agreed between us was that the paintings should reflect the
development of the building from what was then quite literally, a big hole in the
ground, through to its finished state, which will be sometime in the summer of
this year, 2017.
Collectively the
paintings can be read sequentially, (but don’t have to be), and so trace how
the buildings physicality adjusts within its breathing space and materials are
brought on site to be consumed by the expanding form. I felt from the start
that I would need a more ‘constructed’ painted surface than I had been used to
and it took some time to settle on a visual mechanism characteristic of the
precision & logic that was evident throughout all of my site visits. The project
witnesses both the before and the after, and offers the opportunity to bookend
that process of spatial change in one distinct body of work. I think for a landscape painter, this is a
huge privilege.
The installation
within No. 1 Spinningfields will take place later in the summer following the
buildings completion. Alongside and in addition to those 12 paintings, there
are a number of other paintings, drawings and mixed media images that will form
the basis of a solo exhibition at Contemporary Six Gallery in Manchester in
June, this year.
https://www.simpsonhaugh.com/stories/art-inspired-by-architecture
http://www.contemporarysix.co.uk/
This is a short video commissioned by Contemporary Six and Simpson Haugh about the exhibition...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p_8-IWub64