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Click the images above for more details
Unearthed – by Richard Bartle.
Unearthed is a series of paintings inspired by the landscape at our feet: the natural rocks, the rubble of our ancestors, the broken pottery found on the surface as well as the lost junk and the precious artefacts buried below. Unearthed through a combination of field-walking and using a metal detector - the process of discovery is a performative act, binding artist to land and land to art.
Presented as a collection of found objects free floating on fields of raw canvas, the rich narrative the subsequent compositions offer, evoke the history of the land, of migration and settlement, and consequently the melting pot of cultural identity. The resulting method of discovery, deconstruction, and production, therefore, exist within a liminal space - both at the junction of the past and the present, as well as the threshold of the imagined and the real.
Nature itself plays a critical role, as that which is buried - particularly metal - undergoes a form of alchemical transmutation through the natural oxidisation process, creating surfaces of intricate patinas and aesthetic beauty. Subsequently, through observation and the building up of layers of paint, these surfaces are recreated.
The composition of the work is assembled and projected onto the canvas using an overhead projector. Once outlined the resulting shapes are masked and sealed. Paint is applied using layers of washes, pouring, scraping, and splattering techniques. Finally, the surfaces are sanded to produce the desired effect and the finished work stripped and revealed. These methods evolve with the objects, techniques are tested and modified, and control is constantly given over to chance. Once again, the notion of the liminal space is present - this time between abstraction and representation.
As with all my work, Unearthed is about the joy of painting and my love of experimentation, about becoming immersed in a place, about being active in the landscape, but mostly about searching out stories in the hope that I might better understand my own position within the world. It is also a continuation of a career long curiosity surrounding the philosophy and physicality of alchemy. In this case, it’s the process of turning worthless lost things into art.
Brick & Stone, Iron & Bronze
Brick & Stone, Iron & Bronze was a series of paintings created on residency in the small farming community of Wood Enderby, Lincolnshire, and exhibited at Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire.
Exhibition dates: 1st - 30th June 2024
Tattershall Castle
37 Sleaford Road
Tattershall
Lincolnshire
Photographer: Mike Pounder |
Text was written by artist and curator Sean Williams, in response to Brick & Stone, Iron & Bronze. "I will never rest until I have danced the Gold Dance” Richard’s new body of work is based on the objects he has found with a metal detector in Lincolnshire. Metal detecting is the performative act to gather material for the work. The results are large-scale paintings with the imagery presented starkly, seemingly hovering in the indefinite space of the canvas, their form apparent from a distance, demanding closer inspection. The motifs are of unearthed coins, buttons and jewellery that Richard has uncovered and returned to the world above ground. They have been held by the land for too long. Richard has persuaded it to relinquish these charms so that they can tell their stories of the time and the place, of how they came to be where they are and of the people who made, gifted and traded them. Through them, we know so much more about the land, the people, the settlements and the societies. They live again, in a sense. In the paintings chunks of iron lie with more glittering trove. There is no hierarchy when things fall to the ground and are subsumed by the soil. The Lewis Chessmen king and the pawn were found in the same hoard. The manner of their depiction, like a newly-ploughed field, is well worth exploring. They are not painted in the way Rembrandt might, suggesting form with consummate understanding of how the stuff of oil paint can be manipulated. Neither are they the Photo-Realist flatness of, say, Richard Estes, seducing us with highly impressive illusion. These are heavy-knit, with thick paint built to replicate the textures, the lumps and bumps – so close to being objects, almost embossed. Elsewhere, rusted elements are described in many delicate layers of spattered paint, a host of colours revealed; pieces of flint lending themselves so perfectly to painting, with a hint of the coolness of hard-edged abstraction - clean, crisp outlines, utter and definitive. And there’s the Oldenburg phenomena of seeing outsize objects, Brobdingnagian, simultaneously fun and disarming – relatively humble trinkets given status, the ephemera of their day made special, firstly by the passage of time, and now foregrounded by the power of Art, raised by the artistic process; the careful selection, the surgical precision in making – the choice of appropriate materials, the subtle mixing of colours, the joyous application of paint, all with the aim of making a painting that delights and engages to make you want to discover more – like the thrill of the detector’s beep – that rush of adrenalin – that could signal buried treasure and a fortune. Fortune, not luck. Plans have been laid to create the chance of this happening. “What dance would you do when you find gold?” Sean Williams. |
© Richard Bartle, all rights reserved.