Jeremy Gardiner‘A long the Dorset Coast ’

Cover image: MMoorrnniinngg MMiisstt�� SStt OOsswwaalldd’’ss BBaayy Acrylic and jesmonite on birch panel ��cm x ��cm x �cm

‘A long the Dorset Coast ’An exhibit ion of paint ings by Jeremy Gardiner

Saturday �th October – Sunday ��th October ���� contemporary f ine art

Landscape painters� broadly speaking – for the category is as broad and various as the subject itself – may besaid to come in two kinds: there are what might be called� without the least disparagement – for the greatTurner would head any such list – the Travellers� who find their material where by chance or design they findthemselves� And there are the Locals� who would rather work themselves into an ever�deepening familiaritywith their chosen country� and� like Constable� perhaps even make it in time their own�

Jeremy Gardiner is very much a landscape painter of this second sort� for all that a spot lately and particularlyfavoured by him is a remote and all but desert island off the coast of Brazil� But it is the southern coast ofEngland� and in particular the dramatically lovely stretch that runs some �� miles from Hampshire to Devon�taking in the whole of the Dorset coastline on the way� that now principally claims him� Latterly re�christened the Jurassic Coast� this since at least the mid�th century has been celebrated for its fossils: forthe fossil record laid down some �� million years ago� beneath strata that were heaved and rippled onlysome �� million years ago� is being constantly laid bare by the countless tides� that even now tug at andabrade it� for all man’s hopeless efforts to hold them back� He has walked this coast� ridden it and even flownover it� He has drawn it endlessly� studied deeply its history� its geology and� above all� its palaeontology� Allthis long experience and innate sympathy� to say nothing of deep and subtle actual observation� he nowdistils into these remarkable paintings�

But clearly they are not landscape paintings in any conventional sense of the observed record and response� a single integral view seen and noted� if not actually resolved� there and then� Yet such work out in thelandscape� direct from the subject� is fundamental to his practice� indeed is its very underpinning� He sets outwith a bag full of irregular pieces of prepared card or board� to work on where and when he feels he must –where the particular view touches who knows quite what visual and responsive nerve� These he brings backto the studio� to work from� or with – for some may become physically part of the final work� And� true tosuch response� each painting carries particular and closely recognisable elements of the chosen� familiar�scene – here we see Durdle Door� now the clear sweep of Eype� now the stark profile of Old Harry� ThePinnacle� The Haystack� Informing every piece� is a clear� a palpable� sense of place�

But these� important as they are� delicately formalised and abstracted to a degree� remain but elements in awider scheme� Recognisable as they may be as views� they are never descriptions� even up to a point� noreven schematic representations� for the view sweeps or conflates beyond any possible direct experience of it�as it is� So� along with the noted� suggested landscape� here in the work we find other elements� othermetaphorical promptings and possibilities� other qualities and presences that are quite as much physical asimaginative� Even those bits and pieces� on which he works out in the landscape� have their part to play� insetting a kind of formal counter�point and arbitrary suggestion against the thing seen�

DDuurrddllee DDoooorr�� ssuunnrriissee Acrylic and jesmonite on birch panel ��cm x ��cm x �cm

MMuuppee BBaayy aanndd PPoorrttllaanndd Acrylic and jesmonite on birch panel ��cm x ��cm x �cm

And by the sheer physicality of the final paintings themselves� in the actual thickness and solidity of thesubstantial wooden blocks that are their practical supports� and then in the often drastic modification of theirsurface� they seem indeed more made than painted� With the addition of perhaps only a superficial element�they are rubbed and scraped� incised� stripped down� cut through layer by layer� left to bake in the sun� andthen painted� and rubbed and scraped again� And laid bare deep within it will be the physical image of thefossil fragment appropriate to the very spot� that is the nominal subject of the work� In short the veryprocess of their painting and making is an image in sort of the processes of the earth itself – of surfacesrubbed and polished� eroded� abraded and cut through� stratum by stratum� just as the cliff is cut away by theimplacable sea�

So quite what is it that we are seeing� and above all feeling� before these rather strange� and rather lovelythings? There is certainly a romanticism to it in which we can readily share� that strikes a plangent� atavisticchord� an unspoken nostalgia for an unknowable past� and a sense that all things must pass� even the rocksthemselves and the endlessly restless sea� They are visual metaphors� perhaps� not just for what is seen butfor what is felt� essential distillations� as it were� to be mixed with other senses� other feelings� For thedeeper sense evoked is perhaps that of memory� and more than that� of an unlayering of memory� leading usback into an unfathomably deep and impenetrably mysterious past� time out of mind�

There is of course a clear distinction to be drawn between the healthily romantic and the sentimental� Subtle�knowing and beautiful as these paintings are� there is nothing sentimental to them� but rather a quality quiteits converse� which is to say a clear�headed practicality� and the sense that they could only have been madenow� All true artists acknowledge their influences� for the whole of Art is there to be made use of� andJeremy Gardiner is no exception� openly accepting the long tradition of the British landscape in which heworks� But it is� for him� one that is set very much in a modern context� He looks perhaps to John Tunnard�Eric Ravilious and Alexander Mackenzie� and particularly to the metaphysical landscapes of Paul Nash� on theone hand� but quite as much to the more elliptical� conceptual and inter�disciplinary approaches of our owntime� And in all of this he remains nothing if not his own man�

William PackerBrixtonSeptember ����

WWaattcchh RRoocckk llooookkiinngg ttoowwaarrddss SSeeaaccoommbbee Acrylic and jesmonite on birch panel ��cm x ��cm x �cm

MMoooonnlliigghhtt�� WWiinnssppiitt Acrylic and jesmonite on birch panel ��cm x ��cm x �cm

AAuugguusstt eevveenniinngg�� LLyymmee RReeggiiss Acrylic and jesmonite on � birch panels ���cm x ��cm x �cm

MMoorrnniinngg ttiiddee�� OOlldd HHaarrrryy Acrylic and jesmonite on � birch panels ���cm x ��cm x �cm

SSeeaattoowwnn llooookkiinngg ttoowwaarrddss GGoollddeenn CCaapp Acrylic and jesmonite on birch panel ��cm x ��cm x �cm

AAnnvviill PPooiinntt�� SSpprriinngg Acrylic and jesmonite on birch panel ��cm x ��cm x �cm

DDuurrllssttoonn BBaayy aanndd PPeevveerriill PPooiinntt Acrylic and jesmonite on � birch panels ��cm x ��cm x �cm

Jeremy Gardiner Born ������ Royal College of Art� MA Painting� �� University of Newcastle upon Tyne

BA Hons Fine Art

Awards and Fellowships���� Arts and Humanities Research Council grant���� Peterborough Art Prize���� NESTA grant� New Forms Grant� Cultural Affairs Council� Florida Florida Council on the Arts Fellowship�� Prix Ars� Austria�� New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship� Major Works grant� Massachusetts Council on the

Arts & Humanities����� Harkness Fellowship�� Churchill Fellowship� Artist in Industry Fellowship�

Arts Council of Great Britain

Selected One Person Exhibitions���� Belgrave Gallery� St Ives

Atrium Gallery� Bournemouth University���� th Aldeburgh Festival

Midtsommerfest� Tysvaer� NorwayBlack Swan Arts� Frome� Somerset

���� Gallery ���� LondonMaltby Gallery� WinchesterNorthcote Gallery� London

���� Lighthouse� Poole Arts CentreFugl Fonix Gallery� Etne� Norway

��� Maltby Gallery� Winchester���� Belgrave Gallery� London Fine Arts Museum of Long Island� Centro Cultural Candido Mendes� Rio de Janeiro

Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo�� Compton Gallery� MIT� Cambridge� Massachusetts� George Sherman Gallery� Boston University�� Galerie �� London�� General Electric Headquarters� London

Selected Group Exhibitions���� St Ives� Selected Artists� Belgrave Gallery� St Ives���� Art Loan Collection� Bournemouth University

Time Passes� Renscombe Farm� Worth MatraversOriginals� Mall galleries� London��/� Art Fair� LondonArt on Paper� Royal College of Art� London

��� Royal Academy Summer ExhibitionArt Loan Collection� Winchester University

���� New Media Arts� First Beijing International Exhibition

���� Works on Paper� Sears Peyton Gallery� New YorkHunting Art Prize� Royal College of Art� LondonSelected Works� Milliken Gallery� London

���� The Contemporary Landscape� Campden Gallery� Chipping CampdenPeterborough Art Prize� Peterborough Museum

���� Laing landscape competition� Mall Galleries� LondonQuiet Waters� Poole Study GalleryA Pelican in the Wilderness� Holburne Museum of Art� Bath

��� Maltby Gallery� WinchesterLaing landscape competition� Mall Galleries� London��th Century Art Fair� LondonArt Loan Collection� Bournemouth UniversityBelgrave Gallery� St Ives� CornwallThe Discerning Eye� Mall Galleries� London

CADE� Historical Museum� Novorsibirsk� Siberia� RussiaBelloc Lowndes Fine Art� ChicagoGamut� Colville Place Gallery� LondonArt on Paper Fair� Royal College of Art ��TH Autumn Exhibition� Royal West of England Academy� Bristol

� Landmark� Atrium Gallery� Bournemouth University��th Century British Art Fair� London

� Isle of Purbeck� Silicon Gallery� Philadelphia� Multimedia Artworks� University of Ghent� Belgium ArCade Prints� Brighton University� Nature Morte� Joel Kessler Gallery� Miami Virtual Memories� Friends of Photography�

San Francisco� Print �� Arnolfini Gallery� Bristol

Ficitve Strategies� Squibb Gallery� New York�� Emerging Visions� Tibor de Nagy Gallery� New York

Summer in the City� Twining Gallery� New YorkA Kiss is just a Kiss� Twining Gallery� New York

�� Emerging Expressions� Bronx Museum� New YorkGroup Show� Casas Toledo Oosterom� New York

�� ��nd Venice Biennial� ItalyTradition & Innovation in Printmaking� Barbican� London

� State of the Art� Twining Gallery� New YorkPanopticon� New England Arts Biennial� University of AmherstEmerging Expressions� Bronx Museum� New YorkSelf Portraits� The Photographers Gallery� London

�� Electra ��� Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville� ParisChristies Inaugural� Christies Contemporary Art�London

�� New Contemporaries� ICA� London�� Artist in Industry� Sheffield City Art Gallery� (touring)

Selected BibliographyPeter Davies� ‘St Ives� � – ��� : Art Colony in Transition�’ St Ives Printing and Publishing Co� ����Jeremy Miles� ‘The Constant Gardiner�’ The Daily Echo� March �� ����Christopher Hansford� ‘Inspired by a Jurassic Landscape�’ Bath Chronicle� January �� ����Peter Davies� ‘Jurassic Coast�’ Black Swan Publishing� ����Christopher Woodward� ‘Purbeck Light Years�’ ISBN �� ��������� ����Jeremy Miles� ‘Lighting up Lighthouse�’ The Daily Echo� Oct �� ����Simon Olding� ‘Quiet Waters�’ Colville Publishing� ISBN �� ���������� ����Kate Watson�Smyth� ‘Open to Visitors�’ The Independent� Sep �� Josse Bilson� ‘Virtual Isle of Purbeck�’ Computer Arts� April� �Jeremy Miles� ‘Celebrating Art in Dorset�’ The Daily Echo� May � �Iain Burt� ‘The Isle of Purbeck� A Very Surreal and Romantic Visit�’ CTI Magazine��Kirsten Solberg� ‘Isle of Purbeck�’ Leonardo� Volume �� Number � �Sandie Angulo� ‘Grants Reward the Creative Struggle�’ Miami Herald� August �� Helen Harrison� ‘Varied Approaches of Expatriates�’ The New York Times� June � John Ross� ‘The Complete Printmaker’� Free Press� �Ginnie Gardiner� ‘Summer in the City�’ Artspeak� June ��Katherine Silberger� ‘Drawing the line�’ Village Voice� August ��� ��Kelly Wise� ‘Jeremy Gardiner�’ The Boston Globe� June �� ��Tom Elliot� ‘Jeremy Gardiner�’ Blitz� July ��Liz Finch� ‘Heuristic Journeys� from Picaso to Rasta�’ Ritz� May� ��Simon Roodhouse� ‘A Personal View�’ Aspects� Autumn ��Lawrence Marks� ‘Art at Work�’ Observer Magazine� December �� ��

Selected Collections BNP Paribas� London�Davis Polk & Wardwell� Paris�Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi� Milan�General Electric� London�GlaxoSmithKline Services Unlimited�Government Art Collection� London�Lawrence Graham LLP�NYNEX Corporate Collection� USA�Pinsent Masons�Victoria and Albert Museum�Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery�Bournemouth University Art Collection�Imperial College Art Collection�Royal College of Art Collection�St Thomas’ Hospital�

Photography by Peter Stone

contemporary f ine art

MMuuppee RRoocckkss Acrylic and jesmonite on birch panel ��cm x ��cm x �cm

High St reet � Ch ipp ing CampdenGloucestersh i re GL �AG

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Open Tues to Sat � ���am – ���pmSunday ���am – � ���pm