The Arrangements

About

Taken using the increasingly rare analogue (film-based) format, some of these photographs were produced with an optical enlarger whilst others have been rendered digitally for the purpose of the present display. To make these images Crews set up numerous temporarycompositions made from all manner of localised detritus, including sundry materials left over from paintings, sculptures and other works produced in the studio. Such rough shards of painted paper, wood and metal, together with a broad range of equally ephemeral, if less conventional elements, were laid down out of doors on “effects panels” (i.e. boards prepared for use as working surfaces for Crews’ paintings), and carefully photographed. The intrinsically intriguing components of these transient “landscapes” or fields of reference include animal bones, stones, and such easily recognisable objects as walking sticks, these having been used by the artist in other series of works. More generally, a vivid mix of both natural and “man-made” elements are brought together in these scurrilously colourful “pictures of nothing, and very like” (to quote, against its intended negativity, William Hazlitt’s dismissal of the work of J M W Turner). In the present case “nothing” is turned into something, highly ordered, sharply coloured, “constructive” compositions are the evocative results of the artist’s open-ended approach to the production of visual work. At a time when photography is often shallow and insipid, Crews’ rich and seductive images encourage the viewer to look, think, and look again.

The Private View will be held on Wednesday 11th October 6-8pm 

For more information visit: http://www.sohrab.co.uk/Sohrab/dream_syrup.html