Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me.
Samuel Beckett
INTRODUCTION
This is Andrew Hardwick’s first exhibition at Millennium. As I write this introduction, A landmark retrospective of Peter Lanyon is being held at Tate, St Ives. As one would expect, a visit to this exhibition is a testament to the power of land and sea, but more specifically to Lanyon’s sense of place, his entwinement within that place. The suggestion of the skeleton fused with the granite underfoot.
Andrew Hardwick is, of course, a very different painter, but we can observe similarities. Certainly in a rawness of approach, but Hardwick’s paintings are also born from an intimate relationship with location. This relationship is extracted in part from Hardwick’s farming heritage. Their farm adjoined the Bristol Channel and included a large acreage of tidal salt marshes. We see the dramatic shift in this landscape but also his personal history, for example in the painting ‘Ditches, Docks and Storage Car Park’ where the landscape of his childhood lurks beneath a car park where once the family sheep roamed, a place where the new world has superseded the archaic and we see the transition. In contrast, in the paintings ‘Estuary, Saltings, Sheep and Aeroplane’ and ‘Ogmore Coast’ the ghosts of crashed war aeroplanes become submerged by the terrain which surrounds them. The violent impact of what was then the modern world, now disintegrates and becomes entombed. This rapid transcients is also supported in the painting ‘Sand Bay’ where toy soldiers squirm in the soil of Hardwick’s childhood playground. The site had earlier been the location of an army camp and gun placement during the war.
All is fleeting, as the passing of time and geology of the earth seem to swallow up all that temporarily sit upon it - adding mass. Adding further delicate layers of history.
Where nostalgia is rendered with the use of toys, the application feels authentic. The intimation is emotive, suggesting triviality when compared to the heavy rendering of soil and stone. These trinkets - these memories, like all matter, become buried with the passing of time. Personally and universally - our own childhoods become lost.
It often seems that the pursuit of many landscape artists is to compete with beauty of the natural world; this objective sets up a competition with the muse, wrangling with its evocation of the majestic. Hardwick’s often large, cinematic panel paintings subvert these notions - the ego belongs to nature and we are reassuringly reminded of it. The beauty proffered is not conventional, or judgmental. These paintings are honest and unsentimental.
Hardwick’s raw surfaces appear almost attacked, with violent indiscriminate fervour - there is little concession towards fussiness or prettying. These are paintings that revel in material. Where paint, matter, earth and pigment, often from the direct source of the inspiration of a painting are poured and built in to a surface. They appear heavy but also fragile. That which appears delicate makes a consent to much considered ecological fragility. But the weight and the mass somehow reverts the balance in the argument, placing emphasis of the momentous power of the earth over us - a sanguine notion. We become just another fragile geological layer. Reminding us of our own loss of intimacy with our surroundings and in part our stain upon it - the inconsequence of our contemporary concerns. This is where I feel that their optimism lies; in that they confront our ego, by reminding us that some things are much bigger than us. Perhaps some things are more enduring.
Joseph Clarke
Samuel Beckett
INTRODUCTION
This is Andrew Hardwick’s first exhibition at Millennium. As I write this introduction, A landmark retrospective of Peter Lanyon is being held at Tate, St Ives. As one would expect, a visit to this exhibition is a testament to the power of land and sea, but more specifically to Lanyon’s sense of place, his entwinement within that place. The suggestion of the skeleton fused with the granite underfoot.
Andrew Hardwick is, of course, a very different painter, but we can observe similarities. Certainly in a rawness of approach, but Hardwick’s paintings are also born from an intimate relationship with location. This relationship is extracted in part from Hardwick’s farming heritage. Their farm adjoined the Bristol Channel and included a large acreage of tidal salt marshes. We see the dramatic shift in this landscape but also his personal history, for example in the painting ‘Ditches, Docks and Storage Car Park’ where the landscape of his childhood lurks beneath a car park where once the family sheep roamed, a place where the new world has superseded the archaic and we see the transition. In contrast, in the paintings ‘Estuary, Saltings, Sheep and Aeroplane’ and ‘Ogmore Coast’ the ghosts of crashed war aeroplanes become submerged by the terrain which surrounds them. The violent impact of what was then the modern world, now disintegrates and becomes entombed. This rapid transcients is also supported in the painting ‘Sand Bay’ where toy soldiers squirm in the soil of Hardwick’s childhood playground. The site had earlier been the location of an army camp and gun placement during the war.
All is fleeting, as the passing of time and geology of the earth seem to swallow up all that temporarily sit upon it - adding mass. Adding further delicate layers of history.
Where nostalgia is rendered with the use of toys, the application feels authentic. The intimation is emotive, suggesting triviality when compared to the heavy rendering of soil and stone. These trinkets - these memories, like all matter, become buried with the passing of time. Personally and universally - our own childhoods become lost.
It often seems that the pursuit of many landscape artists is to compete with beauty of the natural world; this objective sets up a competition with the muse, wrangling with its evocation of the majestic. Hardwick’s often large, cinematic panel paintings subvert these notions - the ego belongs to nature and we are reassuringly reminded of it. The beauty proffered is not conventional, or judgmental. These paintings are honest and unsentimental.
Hardwick’s raw surfaces appear almost attacked, with violent indiscriminate fervour - there is little concession towards fussiness or prettying. These are paintings that revel in material. Where paint, matter, earth and pigment, often from the direct source of the inspiration of a painting are poured and built in to a surface. They appear heavy but also fragile. That which appears delicate makes a consent to much considered ecological fragility. But the weight and the mass somehow reverts the balance in the argument, placing emphasis of the momentous power of the earth over us - a sanguine notion. We become just another fragile geological layer. Reminding us of our own loss of intimacy with our surroundings and in part our stain upon it - the inconsequence of our contemporary concerns. This is where I feel that their optimism lies; in that they confront our ego, by reminding us that some things are much bigger than us. Perhaps some things are more enduring.
Joseph Clarke
Cliffs, Estuary and Tractor
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes and other collage material on panels
174 x 316 cm
Sand Bay
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes and other collage material on panels
174 x 316 cm
Ogmore Coast
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, roofing felt and other collage material on panels
171 x 342 cm
Bay, Estuary, Milky Grey Day
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes and other collage material on panels
174 x 316 cm
Estuary, Red Sun and Football
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, football and other collage material on panels
186 x 342 cm
Dark Sky and Sea
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, wax, roofing felt and other collage material on panels
174 x 316 cm
Stormy Day, Dark Blue Sea and Caravans
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panels
174 x 316 cm
Estuary, Sheep, Dull Day and the M4 Motorway
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes and other collage material on panels
174 x 316 cm
Estuary, Saltings, Sheep and Aeroplane
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panel
122 x 159 cm
Ditches , Docks and Storage Car Park
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panel
122 x 178 cm
Oak Tree, Empty Car Pound, Docks and Cars
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panel
122 x 159 cm
Avonmouth, Saltings and Brown Estuary
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panel
59 x 76 cm
Autumn, Wind, Rain, Dartmoor
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panel
59 x 75 cm
Rain, Autumn Sea and Headland
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panel
93 x 97 cm
Grey Day, North Devon and Lundy
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panel
122 x 150 cm
Last Light, South Moor, Dartmoor
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panel
170 x 245 cm
Cornwall, Cliffs, Moonlight and Sea
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panel
170 x 245 cm
Rock, Sand, Mud and Sea
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, plaster, earth pigment, plastic, hay, ashes, and other collage material on panels
186 x 342 cm
Scrapyard, Cornwall
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on panel
92 x 105 cm
A30, Cornwall
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on panel
92 x 105 cm
Moor, Winter, Cornwall
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on canvas
53 x 44 cm
Dartmoor, Hill & Sheep
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on canvas
53 x 44 cm
Cliffs, Pendeen
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on canvas
38 x 38 cm
Cows, Bushes, Bodmin Moor
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on board
31 x 41 cm
Wasteland, Old Car & Distant Houses
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on board
31 x 41 cm
Wind, Rain, Cows & Bodmin Moor
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on board
31 x 41 cm
Bodmin, Autumn Day
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on board
31 x 41 cm
Cliffs, Moonlight, Cornwall
oil, acrylic, emulsion, pva, and other collage material on board
31 x 41 cm
