JEREMY GARDINER & AMANDA WALLWORK 14 July – 11 August 2012 This new exhibition of paintings and prints examines the rocks and strata that form the hidden landscape of this unique coastline. The work seeks to express the unimaginable vastness of geological timescales.
Jeremy Gardiner’s work is well known for its exploration of the Dorset coastline. For Coast Unearthed he has produced a series of vertical monoprints that suggest a downward slice through the landscape. One section might be a view of the Dorset landscape seen on a coastal walk, another a cross-section of a fossil found in that location, whilst another element might be the contour patterns seen from the air captured by LiDAR, an optical remote sensing technology that can measure the change in elevation of the landscape using pulses from a laser.
Amanda Wallwork’s practice is concerned with geology and archaeology. She is interested in the part humans play in the shaping of landscape, the impact we have and the traces we leave behind. Her paintings, constructed from layers of plaster and oil paint, continuously built up and sanded down and then drawn on or scratched through to expose the layers beneath evoke the experience of archaeological excavations and the process of erosion.
In a departure from previous work revealing traces in the earth when viewed from above, recent works go below ground exploring the geology beneath. Homing in on the physicality and colour of the exposed rock-face of the coast. The work for this exhibition references the term ‘deep time’ used to describe the concept of the vast, but finite, period of time represented by geological timescales and the ‘colour’ of time as symbolised by geological mapping. These works convey a sense of the age-old, all knowing of the rock beneath our feet and the concept of these slowly formed layers acting as compressed data stores recording everything.
The artists will be giving a talk about their work in the gallery at 2pm on Saturday 21 July.
