Ione Parkin RWA

ELEMENTAL LANDSCAPES

Recent paintings by Ione Parkin and Andrew Hardwick
Michael Tippett Centre, Bath Spa University College, 29th June to 21st August ,1999

These paintings are evocative and provocative images. They explore primordial and perpetually changing aspects of landscape – land and water, light and dark, order and chaos.

Both artists seek through their work to express the internalised, raw experiences of being in the landscape. For them, landscape is about more than topography, encompassing both the elements that make up the natural world as well as the elemental dynamics of landscape evolution – tidal erosion and deposition, storm and earth energy, geological layering and upheaval. From this commonality of interest and intent, these artists create individually distinctive but correlative visual realities.

Ione Parkin’s paintings are expressions of the interaction of energy and form within landscape. Movement is caught in its own act of creation, appearing freeze-framed in space and time. This is particularly evident in The Rhythm of Chaos (13) where the complex structural integrity comes from balancing the energy pulses of colour and tone with linear mark making, setting up counter-rhythms of pace and direction. Parkin works in concentrated and energetic bursts of gestural fluidity, using actual organic fragments of branch, frond and feather – abandoning the brush to increase the range of mark making possibilities. The choreographic and calligraphic dexterity of the works traces the constantly changing character of landscape, for instance in Mutable Shore (5) which explores the shifting interface between elements. These images are in sympathetic resonance with the forces of organic life – as in Enmeshment (3) – and with the explosiveness of geological frictions – seen in Lava (7). Some works are ferociously inspired while others vibrate with numinous radiance, particularly Dark Tarn (4), seemingly charred by the intensity of its own inner light.

Andrew Hardwick’s paintings suggest rather than describe landscape components and perspectives. Spatial relationships are subverted and ambiguously rendered, for example in Red Earth (12) where the internal space within the painting is subtly dislocated. Hardwick’s work is suffused with geological and archaeological references, features and facets, as evident in Crevice (6) and his two untitled works (8 and 14). Hardwick is bold in scale and experimental with materials, creating multi-layered works that are rich in texture and stratigraphy, the outcome of months of patient sculpting, scraping, scouring and re-layering. The results can be brooding and disturbing but possess a dark luminosity, as in the largest work of the exhibition, Transient Land (1) which, fuelled by light from within, emanates a profound sacredness of place.

These works offer a powerful, challenging and contemporary insight into aspects of our relationship as sentient, imaginative beings with the awesome, force-filled, elemental landscape around us.

David Metcalfe
July 1999