|
||||||||||||
|
This exhibition marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of my first exhibition of paintings. I decided to mark the moment by changing direction somewhat and exhibit my photographs for the first time. The photographs were taken over a period of ten years (1996-2006). Each represents a particular place in a particular country. In total eighteen countries in North and South America, Europe, Australia, Asia and North Africa were represented in the collection. My subjects are walls and there are good reasons for this. Walls are all around us and readily present themselves. They are also related formally to the paintings which I have been making for the past few years – they are planar, variously coloured, textured and, as far as I characterise them, non-figurative. So by investigating and representing walls in photographs, I feel that I am still on familiar territory. The surface of a wall can encapsulate so much of the spirit of a place; peeling plaster, graffiti, weather stains, white-wash and chance marks convey something about a certain climate, a precise geographical location, a particular social and economic situation. Moreover walls are utterly seductive with distinctive colours, shafts of ever-changing sunlight, unexpected and endlessly surprising textures. Walls unmistakably locate us. For example, the ubiquitous venetian red walls of Venice, the golden sandstone walls of Batalha Cathedral in Portugal, or the distinctive mortar-less masonry of Machu Picchu, couldn’t be mistaken for any other place. These photographs, in no small part, depend on ordered form and controlled placement; I tried to achieve an assured precision within the imagery while retaining evocative and abstract qualities. Accurate placement of form and crucial compositional structure is coupled with saturated colour values and seductive surface textures. I have always taken photographs and they have, over the years, served various functions. The most important is that they have been an invaluable source document which fed into my painted images. The photographs on view here however, I consider to be completed statements in themselves and not intermediate stages on the way to something else.
|
© 2007, Gerard Hastings |