Exhibition
TERRY SETCH: 'Lavernock'
24 Jun 2010 – 24 Jul 2010
Regular hours
- Thursday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Friday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Sunday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 11:00 – 18:00
Address
- 84 St. Peter's Street
- London
- N1 8JS
- United Kingdom
About
Terry Setch focuses on a two-mile stretch of beach between Penarth and Lavernock Point on the Severn estuary in south Wales. He regards the beach and the adjoining cliffs as 'his place' and he has observed it, worked on it and thought about it almost daily since he settled in Penarth in1969.Recently this stretch of coastline was designated as a possible site for the Severn barrage and with it the prospect of irrevocable changes to the area. In 2009 Setch won the prestigious Bryan Robertson Trust award to document these changes and this exhibition is the first in a planned series of exhibitions that will record his reaction to the changing vibrancy and culture on and around 'his beach'.
His initial response is a series of landscape based paintings that celebrate the natural beauty of the beach and the headland. They symbolize a sense of place rather than a literal interpretation and reflect his long acquaintance with the terrain: the accumulated memories of the marine light and weather; a knowledge of the tides and shifting currents; the sensation of clambering over the rock-strewn margin between land and sea that is being constantly rearranged by the forty-foot tides which also expose the ancient rock strata and fossils of the headlands. Present too are references to Alfred Sisley whose cliff edge views from Penarth look west towards Lavernock Point where Marconi had sent the first telegraph messages only months before.
The hold that the beach has exerted on Setch has been its ceaselessly changing environment and a frontier that has stimulated a way of working that could acknowledge the traditions of landscape painting while at the same time commenting on the challenge to the natural world from oil spillages, pollutants, fly-tipping, discarded cars, the accumulated detritus washed ashore by the sea and global environmental issues long before they entered the mainstream. This long relationship has been reinvigorated by the prospect of a man-made reef of concrete and high-technology and all that it entails.
Setch's paintings have been widely exhibited in the UK and abroad and he has received numerous prizes and awards. He is represented in the permanent collections of Tate, the Arts Council, British Council, V&A, National Museum of Wales and other public collections in the UK and abroad. In 2009 he was elected a Royal Academician.
view exhibition catalogue:
http://www.artspacegallery.co.uk/BOOKS/Lavernock/index.html
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