13/2/2004
Richard Billingham
ArtSway, Sway
New Forest. As part of the ArtSway residency programme Pro[ duction ] Richard Billingham has made two new video pieces and a number of large colour photographs, all made within the New Forest landscape. The show explores the artist's longstanding interest in beauty and nature and confirms his extraordinary ability to capture an intense feeling for his surroundings.
NEW FOREST
As part of the ArtSway residency programme Pro[ duction ] Richard Billingham has made two new video pieces and a number of large colour photographs, all made within the New Forest landscape. The show explores the artist's longstanding interest in beauty and nature and confirms his extraordinary ability to capture an intense feeling for his surroundings.
Through these individual photographic and video pieces, each different in size and scale, Billingham alights upon patterns and structures within the Forest with an acute sense of the landscapes spatial and temporal qualities... whether it be in capturing the movement of a woodland canopy during a storm, the surreal boundary between a golf course and open heathland or the beauty of an undulating sweep of headland at dusk. The individual works are exhibited as an installation which brings the unique patchwork of the New Forest landscape 'outside' the gallery 'inside' exploring the relationship between outside space and internal space, the viewer and the artist.
Billingham looks to the structure of paintings that move the viewer by their composition and his work has to a
considerable extent been informed by a deep appreciation of landscape painting. These works owe less to antecedents in the photographic world than to the human engagement with nature found in the paintings of Cuyp or Ruysdael, Claude or Poussin, Turner or Constable.
Billingham's celebrated pictures and video work of his immediate family and environment have been the subject of many museum exhibitions throughout the world. As images of love, beauty and intimate community they represent one of the most moving bodies of work at the end of the 20th century. This new work confirms that he is an artist of rare sensibility who is equally able to communicate a profound and intimate relationship with the outside world.
Reception for the artist Saturday 14 February 2004 2 - 4pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday 14 February 2004 at 3.30pm
ArtSway is Open: Tuesday to Sunday 11am-5pm. Admission is FREE
For further information and images contact ArtSway on 01590 682260.
ArtSway is the contemporary visual arts venue in the New Forest facilitating the development of new work by artists and offering creative opportunities for audiences. Richard Billingham's Pro[ duction ] residency at ArtSway was funded by the Regional Arts Lottery Programme through Arts Council England with additional support
Artsway
Station Road, Sway, Hampshire, SO41 6BA
Tel: 01590 682260 Fax: 01590 681989