Many thanks to all who attended 'land water darkness'!

Many thanks to all who attended my exhibition 'land water darkness' over the last month. The last day of the show was this past Saturday 4 October, with a steady stream of visitors, the last being someone who had lived in Copenhagen and had a strong interest in the Greenlandic people. So we watched the slideshow of my Greenland photos from 2008 and had a very interesting discussion. As I did with all of the visitors, except the day when the room was full for most of the afternoon - not quite the Matisse all-nighter at Tate Modern (see my review of this event here http://indigovioletlarkin.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/feeding-eyes-matisse-all-nighter-at.html) but very busy indeed for the size of the gallery, and impossible for me to talk to everyone personally, though I would have liked to!

In a word, thank you all for coming, for your attention, for your time, your questions, your responses, your interest, your enthusiasm. It has made it all worthwhile.

As for this blog, in the days and weeks to come I will resume posting all the changes to the exhibition over its month-long run, with some responses to some of the feedback as well, and answers to some of the questions that were asked. I will also continue reviewing some of the exhibitions visited, in my 'Feeding the Eyes' series. So keep this page bookmarked, and be sure also that news of my forthcoming exhibitions and activities will also appear here.

Last day of 'land water darkness' exhibition at the Gas Gallery - Saturday 4 October 2014

Tomorrow (Saturday 4 October) is my last day for this exhibition which has run since 4 September. I will be in the gallery upstairs from around 1pm until closing at 5pm, after which the exhibition must come down. There are more photos on display than ever, so if you haven't been for a while - today over 30 new photos went up, most of which are mixed media pieces with aint and/or ink. Everyone welcome, look forward to meeting you!

The Gas Gallery / Oriel Nwy is located about 50 metres left of the rail station, or parking is at Matalan and cross the road. Look for the red brick building with a huge glass front.

Last week of Indigo Violet Larkin's show 'Land Water Darkness' at Gas Gallery

It's the last week of my show at the Gas Gallery in Aberystwyth, and I am making many dramatic additions and changes each day! Am in the gallery every day this week from 12 noon to 5 pm (from 2pm on Friday) so if you haven't seen the exhibition, seen me in it, or even haven't seen it in a while, now's your chance!

After the show finishes on 4 October, blog postings will resume.

http://indigovioletlarkin.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/indigo-violet-larkins-solo-show-poster.html

Indigo's photos shown with Mar Shro Gora at Cardiff's Scratch Platform

 

 

Above a rather shabby Irish-themed pub, a nice square of banquet chairs and leather sofas surround a professionally lit bit of floor, the platform for an evening of experimentation. On this floor treads a cream silk-suited creature in a hat suitable for meeting, or possibly impersonating, royalty. In one black-gloved hand she holds a camera. In the other hand she also holds... a camera, and a red ribbon, which she proffers to an unsuspecting soul in the front row. He takes it, and she moves slowly away, all the while taking photographs of herself.

Meanwhile, my photographs are being passed around the room.

This is my friend Mar Shro Gora performing the first version of a performance art piece she calls 'Taking the self for a walk', in a reworking of the famous line by Paul Klee. My photographs, a series also depicting a night time walk, are a last minute addition to this performance at Scratch Platform, held in Four Bars, Cardiff, on 31 August 2014.

The photographer Piri was also taking photos of Mar Shro, but for some reason I was not. Am entitled to the odd night off.

Photos and performance copyright Mar Shro Gora 2014.

With thanks to Fizzi Events for making Scratch Platform happen.

Indigo's videos screened at Stories by Gaslight evening

A darkened room, a standing lamp, a wooden floor, three rows of chairs, a gradually accreting audience, a sheet with wavy wrinkles serving as a screen onto which images of ceaseless waves melt into the electric colours of evening.

Or, to give the prosaic account:

Was very pleased to be asked to screen my videos at the 'Stories by Gaslight' evening at the Gas Gallery / Oriel Nwy on 3 September 2014. Organised and hosted by Peter Stevenson, 'Stories by Gaslight' has become a regular feature in the upstairs gallery, allowing the traditional art form of storytelling to exist surrounded by contemporary art. My work was the opener for the narrative ballads of folk singer Lynne Denman, whose songs from long-ago Virginia I found particularly enchanting.

Screening list (all Aberystwyth premieres):

'WATER: aberystwyth' (2014)

'treemorph' (2014)

'WATER: plymouth' (2014)

'Daisy Daisy' (2014)

That'll do, Pig.

Photo copyright Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

Exhibition preparations: installing the furniture

The furniture in the gallery is to create the open studio workspace for me as I will be in Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons (and probably other times as well). Do drop in and say hello, feel free to ask questions. Videos will be playing when the artist is present, so that's an added incentive to visit.

All photos copyright Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

Indigo Violet Larkin's exhibition 'land water darkness' continues at Gas Gallery / Oriel Nwy in Aberystwyth until 4 October. The gallery is open Monday to Saturday 11am to 5pm, and admission is free. Indigo Violet Larkin will be present in the exhibition from 2-5pm Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and quite probably at other times as well.

Feeding the eyes: Matisse all-nighter at Tate Modern

 

After a very successful opening of my own exhibition 'land water darkness' at Gas Gallery / Oriel Nwy last Friday, raced home for a few hours' sleep before treating myself to catching the last weekend of the 'Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs' exhibition at Tate Modern in London, with its special all-nighter. So it is possible to share these exclusive photos of what it was like around 10pm when a huge number of people were queueing for timed admission. The show was very crowded most of the day, but well worth seeing. A review of the exhibition itself will appear here after I've brought the Indigo Violet Larkin exhibition postings up to date.

All photos copyright Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

 

Everything about the exhibition design was big and chunky.
 

 

Was so excited I forgot to attend the free screenings of 'Matisse in Tangiers'!

The man in the dark jacket was trying to organise the queue.

Tate employee remaining chipper dealing with processing a six-foot chain of tickets.
 

The queue to enter the exhibition at 10pm went on and on.
 

And when they finally got to the front of the queue...

 

 

...everybody packed up in the first room. It was very crowded, but not impossible.

 



Downstairs does not normally look like this on late openings!

The new downstairs bar in the Turbine Hall was doing a roaring trade. Did not look to see if there was any special Cut-Outs beer.

Exhibition preparations: painting the walls

Monday 1 September - day -3

The exhibition space is mine! Previous work has been taken down... and hundreds of tiny marks are now visible on the white walls, and must be painted over.

 

The use of a paintbrush in the hand is always pleasurable.

The more marks are painted over, the more marks become visible.

While working, I am put in mind of an artist called Hiwa K. Kurdish, he attended art school in Germany before coming to the UK. He began by painting all the marks off the white walls.

He did this every day. When he returned from a week's absence, someone else had taken over his space and there was blue paint everywhere. Patiently, he began returning every square centimetre to pure white.

Eventually they called him in and demanded to know when he was going to produce some work. His response was to continue painting the walls, even though they didn't realise this was the work. Oh, and he hung a pair of rubber gloves off the clock.

They threw him out.

Hail Hiwa K, for making us notice the minute, the medium, the surface, the Forth Bridge-ness of the life without mindfulness.

All photos copyright Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

More on Hiwa K at http://hiwak.net/ 

For those not familiar with Scotland's Forth Bridge, the idea is that as soon as the worker finishes painting it, the work needs to start all over again in a never ending cycle.

Exhibition preparations: the empty space

 

Some photos of the empty upstairs gallery at Gas Gallery / Oriel Nwy, just before my exhibition 'land water darkness' was installed. All photos copyright Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

 

Exhibition preparations

Many e-mails are necessary to prepare an exhibition. To the translator, the maker of text panels, the person organising exhibition invigilators. And much time is spent sitting the cafe for scientists - selecting photos, editing videos, eating toasted ham and cheese sandwiches.

So an antidote to all this sitting around is the gym. My heavily discounted summer membership allows me to drop in on unlimited fitness classes. Having put off my toastie in favour of the mellow Pilates Fitball, was amazed to discover the class magically transformed into hi-rev circuit training. The usual teacher is on holiday, and her replacement dropped the whistle from between his teeth long enough to say that while they would be using the giant blue balls for one of the activities, just for today, it wasn't actually a pilates class.

'Come on, you can do it!' cried the friendly Zumba teacher as she zinged past on the warmup laps. Her encouragement for me to stay was much appreciated, but on reflection I thought it best to conserve energy for the afternoon's photo edit. And for the evening's enthusiastically paced Dumbbell Workout, when my instructor will encourage us with shouts of 'We are a TEAM! Hip hip...'

'HOORAY!!!' we will all respond, while flailing one kilo handweights about at the speed of light.

After all, when mounting exhibitions one has to be able to lift one's own frames, however large.

Above: IBERS cafe. Below: one kilo dumbbells. Photos copyright Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

 

 

Indigo Violet Larkin's exhibition 'land water darkness' opens at Gas Gallery / Oriel Nwy, Aberystwyth on 4 September. Private view 5 September 6-8pm, sneak preview video screening as part of 'Stories by Gaslight' evening of 3 September. Admission to gallery free; tickets for 'Stories by Gaslight' £5.

 

Feeding the eyes: George Shaw

 

Continuing the theme of approaches to landscape, in preparation for my forthcoming abstracted landscape photography solo show...



Recently have been enchanted with the thoughtful stillness of George Shaw's Coventry landscapes, peopleless and often read as melancholic because of the run-down nature of the postwar, post-energetic subject matter. The colours are made from a limited palette designed not for the landscape but for painting model airplanes, Humbrol enamels which imbue the surface of the canvas with the gloss of childhood memory, or the embalming of death. Shaw uses a soft touch and resists the urge to overpaint details with these hobbyist hues: the smallest branches of bare trees become a hazy halo consistent with brushwork elsewhere.

 

For me the most exciting thing about the paintings is the compositional balance so many of them exhibit: large squares balanced against small, each building becoming a network of squares dividing the canvas like the sections of a Mondrian. Often the foreshortened perspective of the ground, such as broken concrete slabs or a strip of paving, draws the eye in to the main part of the picture, where abandoned buildings crumble, or cookie-cutter suburban houses rest, all in a surprising luminous beauty enhanced by their mathematically precise geometrical structure that is the world of Shaw's paintings.



 



Seeing one in Cardiff at the National Museum Wales was a timely pleasure.

More info: Tateshots' George Shaw interview for the 2011 Turner Prize http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-turner-prize-2011-george-shaw

George Shaw's 'The End of Care' is displayed at 'Wales Visitation: Poetry, Romanticism and Myth in Art' at the National Museum Cardiff, until 7 September 2014, admission free. http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/whatson/?event_id=7012

Photos: George Shaw 'The End of Care', 2013 (installation view and details). Photos by Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

Indigo Violet Larkin's exhibition 'land water darkness' opens at Gas Gallery / Oriel Nwy, Aberystwyth on 4 September. Private view 5 September 6-8 pm, sneak preview video screening as part of 'Stories by Gaslight' 3 September. Admission to gallery free; tickets for 'Stories by Gaslight' £5.

Indigo Violet Larkin's solo show: poster!

 

Here is the official poster for my solo show of fine art photography, 'land water darkness', which runs 4 September to 4 October 2014 at the Gas Gallery / Oriel Nwy, Aberystwyth. Full directions to follow. Exhibition open Monday to Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm; admission free. The private view is the evening of Friday 5 September, from 6 to 8 pm.

Photo copyright Indigo Violet Larkin, 2011.

Feeding the eyes: Cezanne and Monet at the National Museum Cardiff

This blog is a warmup for my forthcoming solo show this September at the Gas Gallery / Oriel Nwy in Aberystwyth. In the spirit of thinking about landscape, here are details of two of the paintings I saw in Cardiff last week.

There is always more to learn from Monet and Cezanne.

Above: Paul Cezanne, Provencal Landscape, c. 1837,  photo by Indigo Violet Larkin

Below: Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral, Setting Sun (Symphony in Grey and Pink), photo by Indigo Violet Larkin

Feeding the eyes: Reuben Knutson's utopian images

Always happy to combine art and play (aren't they really the same thing?), I headed off to the opening of Reuben Knutson's interactive exhibition 'Utopian images of the past, present and future in a 1970's Welsh landscape', which shows at Aberystwyth University's School of Art until 12 September. The exhibition is the culmination of his PhD research in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television, but as a longtime inhabitant of the School of Art, he is having his work is presented there.

The exhibition is in three parts: collaged photographic images in the corridor, a twenty-five minute film in the right hand exhibition space, and in the left, a series of overhead projectors (pictured) with a flurry of acetates that the public are invited to layer on the projector bases, and thus display on the walls. At the opening everyone was too shy to 'disturb' the exhibition at first, but this is crucial to its understanding. Archive photographs, reproductions of illustrations and period documents are interspersed with quotations from Walter Benjamin. And it is here that I will have to leave description of the exhibition, until a return visit allows me to see the film in its entirety, and digest the drawers full of images. The communities and events Knutson has researched promise to be extremely engaging, and are currently entirely outside my sphere of knowledge. So stay tuned...

More info on Knutson's exhibition

Photo above: Reuben Knutson, 'Utopian images of the past, present and future in a 1970's Welsh landscape', 2014 (installation view). Photo by Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

Feeding the eyes: Graham Sutherland

Only so much time can be spent looking through one's own back catalogue before visual refeshment is needed. Feeding the eyes, I call it. So last week a visit to the National Museum Cardiff was in order. The current exhibition in the contemporary gallery features five glorious late canvases by Graham Sutherland, as well as a glass case full of his found sculptural objects, and sketches inspired by these objects. All off bounds to the happy snappy instagrammer. However a lovely Sutherland lurks in the permanent collection, on the curvy wall featuring landscapes of Wales.

So now it's back to looking at my own permanent collection, in preparation for my solo show next month.

You want to take better photos? Look at paintings.

Above:
Graham Sutherland painting reproduced in catalogue ('Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World') as browsed at National Museum Cardiff. Photo copyright Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

Below:
Painting: Graham Sutherland, Mountain road with boulder, oil on canvas, 1940 (detail). Photo copyright Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.

'Wales Visitation: Poetry, Romanticism and Myth in Art' is on until 7 September 2014, admission free.

Indigo Violet Larkin: artist statement

About Indigo Violet Larkin

Indigo Violet Larkin works with light and lenses. Her photographs and videos reflect abstract qualities of landscape, details. She thinks of them as painting with light. Sometimes the work is performative, about the process of Indigo making the work.