Exhibitions
Andrew Hardwick, 'Uncultivated Land'
Anima Mundi are proud to present ‘Uncultivated Land’ a solo exhibition of contemporary landscape painting by Andrew Hardwick.
Anima Mundi are proud to present ‘Uncultivated Land’ by Andrew Hardwick, an exhibition that continues to demonstrate Hardwick’s ongoing concern with, and depictions of, the contemporary landscape. ‘Uncultivated Land’ is another chapter, or ongoing documentation of the artist’s experience, locale, and our ongoing treatment of it.
Inspiration continues to be gathered from a specifically intimate and deep rooted relationship with ‘place’, cultivated through a heritage where his family’s farm adjoined the Bristol Channel. First dissected by the building of the motorway and then again by expansion of the docks, most of what Hardwick grew up with has now gone. This story remains typical of all too many locations across the country and further afield, which continue to experience ongoing dramatic transition in the name of progress.
In a very literal sense Hardwick has witnessed his personal history and the intertwined landscape of his childhood, become fractured, buried and now lost. Remaining land, fenced off, now awaits development with much of it so heavily polluted that it could no longer be used for crops. This same area is infused by the light of the nearby sea, coloured by countless years of pollution from its industrial neighbours. The new world has, in an all to real sense, devoured the old.
Hardwick new paintings are of places both witnessed and places envisioned. They are simultaneously pertinent, nostalgic and prophetic, reflecting the role of the romantic tradition of painters such a John Constable and Paul Nash. These are ghost like paintings, where these edge-land and wilderness zones can’t ever quite escape the subtle reminders of our human interference which subverts or jostles with the pastoral.
Whilst continuing to embrace and enhance a tradition, Hardwick’s paintings also continue to subvert through his unconventional technical approach. Works are heavily layered using societal left overs - substance surplus to modern need, found or discarded. Paints and varnish are often sourced from recycling centres or skips, added to plaster, plastics, ash, soils, pigments, spray paint or glue applied impasto over wire, felt, geo-textile membrane, canvas, wood and other unconventional materials. The resultant geological and palimpsestic surface reflects the confusion, complexity and proceeding redevelopment of our existential interplay with the wider subject. The exquisite subtlety of colour and tone built within the surface is often contrasted by a visceral rawness, nurtured or attacked, with love and indiscriminate fervour - evoking a nature “red in tooth and claw” and our “red in tooth and claw” treatment of it - reinforcing our ongoing ecological abandon. These are places to which we feel a simultaneous connect and disconnect.
Andrew Hardwick’s oeuvre makes constant reference to concepts of change, transience and loss. It is not just the rendering of a place, the memory of which becomes all too easily discarded to the scrap heap. The real loss maybe our place within it, as a direct consequence of our contemporary concerns, which may well become inconsequential in the long run. Uncultivated thought could lead us further towards inhabiting a place that we may no longer be able to call home.
Inspiration continues to be gathered from a specifically intimate and deep rooted relationship with ‘place’, cultivated through a heritage where his family’s farm adjoined the Bristol Channel. First dissected by the building of the motorway and then again by expansion of the docks, most of what Hardwick grew up with has now gone. This story remains typical of all too many locations across the country and further afield, which continue to experience ongoing dramatic transition in the name of progress.
In a very literal sense Hardwick has witnessed his personal history and the intertwined landscape of his childhood, become fractured, buried and now lost. Remaining land, fenced off, now awaits development with much of it so heavily polluted that it could no longer be used for crops. This same area is infused by the light of the nearby sea, coloured by countless years of pollution from its industrial neighbours. The new world has, in an all to real sense, devoured the old.
Hardwick new paintings are of places both witnessed and places envisioned. They are simultaneously pertinent, nostalgic and prophetic, reflecting the role of the romantic tradition of painters such a John Constable and Paul Nash. These are ghost like paintings, where these edge-land and wilderness zones can’t ever quite escape the subtle reminders of our human interference which subverts or jostles with the pastoral.
Whilst continuing to embrace and enhance a tradition, Hardwick’s paintings also continue to subvert through his unconventional technical approach. Works are heavily layered using societal left overs - substance surplus to modern need, found or discarded. Paints and varnish are often sourced from recycling centres or skips, added to plaster, plastics, ash, soils, pigments, spray paint or glue applied impasto over wire, felt, geo-textile membrane, canvas, wood and other unconventional materials. The resultant geological and palimpsestic surface reflects the confusion, complexity and proceeding redevelopment of our existential interplay with the wider subject. The exquisite subtlety of colour and tone built within the surface is often contrasted by a visceral rawness, nurtured or attacked, with love and indiscriminate fervour - evoking a nature “red in tooth and claw” and our “red in tooth and claw” treatment of it - reinforcing our ongoing ecological abandon. These are places to which we feel a simultaneous connect and disconnect.
Andrew Hardwick’s oeuvre makes constant reference to concepts of change, transience and loss. It is not just the rendering of a place, the memory of which becomes all too easily discarded to the scrap heap. The real loss maybe our place within it, as a direct consequence of our contemporary concerns, which may well become inconsequential in the long run. Uncultivated thought could lead us further towards inhabiting a place that we may no longer be able to call home.
CREDIT
