Some Dimensions Of My Lunch: Conceptual Art In Britain : Part 4: Ed Herring & Roger Palmer

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The final exhibition of the season brings together two artists: Ed Herring, a land artist who first gained attention in the 1960s for his 'environmental statements'; and Roger Palmer, who combines photograph and text to subvert the traditional view of landscape.

In 1970, Ed Herring took his lunch, a wrapped sandwich and an apple, and very specifically measured and documented its overall dimensions. This emphasis on recording and documenting his findings preoccupied his work for decades: whether it be the rate of replenishing squares of bird seed as it was devoured by animals (Bird Grid, 1969); measuring the rate of condensation and evaporation of filled plastic bags of water with teabags nailed to a tree (Tea-Tree, 1968-69); or measuring the quantities of oil absorbed by the earth via an array of implanted tubes (Oiled Earth, 1969).  These subtle forms of intervention questioned consumption, creation and cultural responsibilities involved in their making, and are deeply rooted in ecological and environmental concerns.

Roger Palmer’s work interrogates “that peculiar practice that many westerners seem to have adopted as a means of acquainting themselves with unfamiliar places, the habit of collecting your personal memories through photography or filmmaking”. He examines how our reading of images changes according to context and accompanying information: in a pair of photographs titled Cloud Falling - A Ridge on Birreencorragh (1977) the viewpoint is very clearly different, altered by the movement of the artist as well as the movement of clouds, yet from the overlaid text we infer it is the same scene.

Photography enabled both Herring and Palmer to develop new enquiries into duration: for Herring, the duration of time it took for the oil to level out, to the duration of time it took for the tea-water within the plastic bags to progressively change, condense, and evaporate over the winter period; for Palmer, the history layered in landscape is explored in silver gelatin photographs strategically grouped and sometimes accompanied by texts. 

This final exhibition in the series illustrates the forgotten history of Conceptual art in Britain, bringing to the forefront works by two undervalued and under-recognised artists, who irrevocably changed our concept of the traditions of modern art.