Harry Cory Wright
dal 10/6/2009 al 10/7/2009
Segnalato da
10/6/2009
Harry Cory Wright
Eleven Fine Art, London
All There Is. Each photograph on display celebrates the glorious complexity of the simplest natural elements; blades of grass, unfurling leaves of springtime, flowers and seed heads all reveal a symphony of colours and textures.
In 2006 Harry Cory Wright travelled through the British Isles for six months
to portray the richness and variety of the British landscape. Each image was
infused with the unique spirit of its location. For this new series of
photographs premiering at Eleven, Cory Wright takes a step closer. After the
large views of his previous works, the artist now focuses on details,
inviting the viewers to navigate the surface of the images and discover the
beautiful worlds available to those who know how to look. Each photograph
celebrates the glorious complexity of the simplest natural elements; blades
of grass, unfurling leaves of springtime, flowers and seed heads all reveal
a symphony of colours and textures.
A dweller in the summer grass
These new pictures of Harry's don't go for the big boom-boom of the whopping
landscape. They don't even give you the feeling of a place, in the sense of
somewhere that is owned, managed, shaped and used. They are - although this
is a slightly odd word to use of a silent medium - much quieter than that.
These are photographs which look as if they were taken in silence. Perhaps a
drag on the roll-up, maybe a rubbing of hands, a scratching of the scalp,
but no conversation, no sociability, no sense of an audience and no feeling,
above all, that the world goes on beyond these particular intimacies. They
are as private as kissing. Individual blades of grass become as important as
an eyelash. This, for a stilled moment, is all there is. It's all here.
That is true, but it is not the whole truth, because the exclusion of the
rest of the world, and coming as close as these photographs do, gives a kind
of life to what Harry is looking at. He gives back to these fragments of the
under-landscape the dignity of their own details. And nowhere does that seem
clearer than where someone has obviously stomped through them, leaving their
footprints in the dark sand strewn with broken mussel shells, or laid low,
with clump-foot indifference, the down-trodden grasses. Those treading marks
in these micro-worlds bring one up short. Don't stroll about as if you were
a Wordsworth, with your eye on the distant and elegant horizon. Abandon
that, slow down, come close, listen for the nightingales and be quiet. Don't
be a dinosaur. Be like John Clare, as he described himself, "A dweller in
the summer grass / Green fields and places green."
Adam Nicolson
Private view Thursday 11th June 2009, 6-8pm
Eleven Fine Art
11 Eccleston Street - London
Gallery Open
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 11.00 - 6.00,
Thursday 11.00 - 7.00,
Saturday 11.00 - 4.00
Free admission