In a new exhibition that opened last week at Hestercombe
Gallery, ‘Terrain: Land into Art’ aims to do for earth what Tania Kovats’ previously
did for water in an exhibition almost a year before at the Taunton-based
contemporary art gallery. What is terrain? Where does Terrain begin and end?
What is our relationship within it? And how can it be explored and depicted as
art, are some of the questions ‘Terrain’ addresses at Hestercombe Gallery, which has
appropriately always hosted a land, garden, or earth-based theme to nearly all
the shows in response to the grounds and context the art is situ in. Quoting
Tim Martin, curator of the gallery and exhibition,
“...It has become
apparent that where landscape meets art and art meets landscape is central to
our overall vision for Hestercombe.”
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| Kathy Prendergast 'Land' (1990) |
The show opens downstairs with Kathy Pendergast’s, ‘Land’ (1990) [pictured above] where a mountain-tent-map hybrid is erected like a tent, but instead of canvas whose surface becomes part map, part mountain-range complete with rivers. The idea of the human element of discovey, exploration and mapping is fused with a visual depiction of the landscape in which it takes place.
As the title of the exhibition suggests, ‘Terrain’ conjures associations
with military, surveying or geological approaches to mapping and understanding
a site or area of land. And the exhibition broadly speaking feels more pragmatic
or scientific in its approach; it has work from artists such as Hamish Fulton,
whose word-based pieces based on a three week walk, have come from a human
experience in the land but are presented as an experience which has already taken
place, then been digested by the artist and processed into the resulting art
work. It seems like what generally comes out at the end of this assimilation is
remarkably detached, a lot cleaner, more considered, conceptual and analysed
than that of the actual experience of being in the landscape. Does the art in
this exhibition offer anything new in how we experience the landscape? Yes, but
some of it does so better than others.
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| Simon Faithfull '30km' (2003) |
Such is the nature of this exhibition which focuses more
on those human reminisces of lived experience in the land than works which feel
as though they are in the moment. They are traces and you have to really be
prepared to imagine and be actively bothered about picturing the likes of Roger Ackling
burning lines into card with a magnifying glass in the piece, ‘In Five Hour
Cloud Drawing’ (1980) so as not to dismiss it as a bunch of lines on card. Visually starved it is instead the process, and the lived-moment of creating
the work, which is in my view a lot more interesting than the result.
There are of course exceptions, with Rachel Lowe’s ‘A
Letter to an Unknown Person No 5’ (1998) is a film piece that records a car
journey in which the artist’s hand desperately struggles to capture the moving landscape
by drawing on the window with a pen. It is frenetic and humorous and very
quickly becomes abstract, Futurist-like, this work touches that most of our experience of
terrain is spent moving through it. Similarly, Simon Faithfull’s ‘30km’ (2003)
film projected onto a circle on the floor documents the launch of a weather
balloon attached to a camera as it spirals upwards giving a dizzyingly aerial perspective
of the land that cuts-out intermittently providing a camera's eye view rather than that of a human perspective. Tim Knowles’ work, ‘Mungo Bush Walk’ (2013) also offers an alternative eye, with a pinhole camera taking images of Australian outback as the artist travelled. It creates an alien-like landscape caught in a mirage haze from the heat of the sun, its brightness likely partly responsible for the out of focus quality of the image.
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| Tim Knowles 'Mungo Bush Walk' (2013) |
Even where artists are working directly from materials
within the landscape, the work becomes semi-detached from it through having
that human interaction. Richard Long uses mud. Raphael Hefti burns moss spores
on photographic paper creating a scientific, moon-like image. Art tends to
claustrophobe landscape, frame it, contain it and put it in commutable little boxes
so it is interesting when artists like Hefti take a small part of it that when
altered opens it out to create an image that alludes to space, the cosmos and something much bigger than the spores it came from.
More inclined toward romantic and aesthetic connections
with landscape, by the end of the exhibition I was craving to go squelch around
the garden in welly boots, romp across a field through the long grass or run up
a big hill and take-in a deep breath of fresh air. None of the work in Terrain
is obvious; Peter Doig being one of the few who offer what will be to many a
more, familiar approach to capturing and expressing the mood of a particular
place, through paint in ‘Red Deer’ (1990). [Coincidently not my favourite Doig,
so a little disappointing as he is a stunning painter.] Along with Gillian
Carnegie, ‘Mono’ (2005) whose dark thickly painted flowers sit in a status
between decay and mourning and works well alongside Anya Gallaccio’s decaying
flower heads behind glass also in the exhibition.
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| Gillian Carnegie 'Mono' (2005) |
In being more challenging the exhibition, like the nature
of terrain itself, proliferates possibilities and opens up a dialogue into
inventive and imaginative interactions between people and terrain. It aims to
look ,“...more to the ground, where bodies
and land meet,” but I would have liked it to go a bit deeper. I felt it a
little too detached from its subject matter, Terrain is a concept, something outside and inside is the gallery where we come to terms and process what it all means. The Dutch artist, herman de vries (not in this
exhibition) still being for me, one of the best artists for capturing a sense
of a very human reality of bringing the land into the gallery in a way that
still feels quite scientific but from a genuine compulsion and fascination to bring the
outside, in. I would like to have seen a bit more angst a bit more warmth, expression than
cold pragmatism which isn't in all the work but overall dominates the show. Essentially an interesting show but
with a little more fish blood and bone, a little more guts, earth and muck and this exhibition could have really
grown into something beautiful, unknown or wild!
‘Terrain: Land
into Art’ is on until 4th July 2016 at Hestercombe
Image sourced from: http://www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk
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