sax impey 'voyage
DESCRIPTION
40 page catalogue of the exhibition 'Voyage' by Sax ImpeyTRANSCRIPT
1
To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,
Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, ‘tis but to hold
Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled.
But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world’s tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!
‘Solitude’, Lord Byron, 1788 - 1824
2
Voyage is a collection of paintings made by Impey since returning last year from a journey by sea from Eastern Australia to Singapore. This physical voyage took him from the Coral Sea through the Torres Strait into the Gulf of Carpentaria, stopping briefly in Darwin. From there, he sailed on across the Arafura Sea into the Timor Sea, sailing on to Bali, then into the Sunda Strait, then northwards past Java to his final destination - a passage through treacherous seas still occupied by pirates, and historically frequented by pioneers on routes of trade and in search of new lands to colonise.
The existential pull of such elements is clear, as Impey states: “21st Century mass communication, the relentless, total, banal, vapid tedium of the seeming need to communicate, or be communicated to, all the time, disappears out there on the ocean. A mind can breathe, and observe, and reflect, away from the shrill desperation of a culture that, having forgotten that it is better to say nothing than something about nothing, invents ever-new ways to fill every single space with less and less. So a certain empathy with earlier travellers ensues: the sea is still the sea, as it ever was, direct and uncomplicated, and the stars are not a great deal older. The specific aroma of an incipient landfall is a shared experience with those who have gone before, as is the bending of a sail to the wind, as is the chart... The sea renews the land, and the possibilities for life, for my life, are renewed, enlarged by the landfall after the sea. The land is better for being arrived at, and I am better for arriving.”
The paintings in this exhibition follow a variety of themes from contemplative paintings of specific areas of ocean to vast celestial expanses undisturbed in the night sky. This continues with the ‘Constellation’ series, works which could be meditative studies of the stars, or the glint of the sun on the ocean, fleeting images that are at the same time perennial, remaining long after the boat has left those waters.
There is also a series of works that incorporate charts and extracts from notebooks. As Impey states: “The chart is a compendium of knowledge, of successive generations of endeavour and experience. I use charts in some of the new work as an acknowledgement of that, and an appreciation of the aesthetic, but most significantly as a personal aide memoir, which combine with logbook notes, painting and photography to provide a specific recollection of time and place.”
The monumental ‘Sumba’ refers to the witnessing of plumes of black smoke rising from the islands coastline, darkening a luminous sky – whether an aboriginal burning of the land, a ritualistic ceremony or a tragic forest fire remains unknown but leaving an indelible impression.
Although Impey has used photography as source material in the past, many of these new works contain an interesting evolution, incorporating the development of a photographic image within the painting process. Self evident in some works, and entirely obscured in others, the possibilities inherent in the combination have clearly invigorated the artist: “the photograph is not an accurate description of a moment, neither is a painting, nor a memory. But to coalesce these elements within an object, perhaps... it’s a lie to tell a truth.”
Slightly separate yet clearly related are a series of beautiful yet eerie paintings of Orford Ness, a feral and remote island just off the Suffolk coast. In the past the area was used as the site of a secret Cold War military testing ground, and now stands as a phantom that seems all the more to illustrate the impotence of our temporary concerns.
It would be simplistic, albeit understandable, to view these paintings as a record of this odyssey, but for me these are not paintings of the sea, the land or the stars, they are a reflection of man’s insignificance when faced with the awesome and sublime might of nature and the cosmos. They are a personal ‘rite of passage’ that stand, already, as a ghost of what has been witnessed, been and gone but exist as a monumental human response to the fleetingness of man’s existence.
The voyage is life through to its brief and inevitable but defiant end. To face it, and to live it is to be liberated. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote “I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now”.
I am sure that such a journey does much to open your eyes, making you very aware of your place within the cosmic order.
Joseph Clarke
17
Consider the sea’s listless chime:Time’s self it is, made audible,The murmur of the earth’s own shell.
Secret continuance sublimeIs the sea’s end: our sight may passNo furlong further. Since time wasThis sound hath told the lapse of time.
No quiet, which is death’s, it hathThe mournfulness of ancient life,Enduring always at dull strife.As the world’s heart of rest and wrath,Its painful pulse is in the sands.Lost utterly, the whole sky stands,Grey and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,Listen alone among the woods;Those voices of twin solitudesShall have one sound alike to thee:Hark where the murmurs of thronged menSurge and sink back and surge again, Still the one voice of wave and tree.
Gather a shell from the strown beachAnd listen at its lips: they sighThe same desire and mystery,The echo of the whole sea’s speech.And all mankind is thus at heartNot anything but what thou art:And Earth, Seas, Man, are all in each.
‘The Sea-Limits’, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828 - 1882
25
Chart (Gulf of Carpentaria)
oil, mixed media and silverprint on hydrographic chart on panel
72 x 104 cm
27
Chart (Lunar Eclipse)
oil, mixed media and silverprint on hydrographic chart on panel
72 x 104 cm
40
CV
1969 Born Penzance, Cornwall
1988-91 BA (Hons) Fine Art, Newport
Solo Exhibitions
2009 ‘Voyage’, Millennium, St. Ives
2007 ‘Sea’, New Millennium Gallery, St Ives
2005 ‘Catena’, One0Two Gallery, London
2004 ‘Events’, New Millennium Gallery, St Ives
2002 ‘Labyrinths’, New Millennium Gallery, St Ives
2000 ‘Transition’, Newlyn Art Gallery
Selected Mixed Exhibitions
2009 Mixed Winter, Millennium, St. Ives
London Art Fair, Business Design Centre, Islington
2008 Drawing Show, NSA, Exchange, Penzance
2007 Art Now Cornwall, Tate St Ives
The St Ives School 1997 - 2007, Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff
2006 Fragments, Cafe Gallery Projects, London
Fragments, Tom Thompson Gallery, Owen Sound, Canada
2003 Starting a Collection, Art First Contemporary Art, London
2002 Constructed, Newlyn Art Gallery
2001 Sax Impey, Richard Nott, Ged Quinn, Fermyn Woods Contemporary Art,
Brigstock, Northamptonshire
2000 Ark 2000, Dilston Grove Church, London
1999 The New St Ives Artists, Maidstone Museum and Art Gallery
1998 Common Ground: Sax Impey and Richard Nott, The Book Gallery, St Ives
1997 Kunstbrucke, Dock 11, Berlin
Landmarks, Cafe Gallery Projects, London
1996 Drawing Towards the End of a Century, Newlyn Art Gallery.
Collaborations
2008 with Red Earth: ‘Longshore Drift’, Suffolk
2007 with Red Earth: ‘Enclosure’, Dorset
2005 with Red Earth: ‘Vanishing Point’, Birling Gap, Sussex
with Red Earth: ‘Jalan’, Trafalgar Square, London
with Red Earth: ‘Geograph – Trace’, Birling Gap, Sussex
2004 with Jony Easterby: Samphire Tower, Samphire Hoe, Dover
Residencies
1997 Kunstbrucke, Berlin
Collections
Arts Council Collection
Warwick University
Connaught Hotel
Private collections worldwide
Publications
2009 Voyage, Millennium
2007 Art Now Cornwall, Susan Daniel-McElroy, Tate Publishing
Sea, New Millennium Gallery
2006 On the Very Edge of the Ocean, Ben Tufnell, Tate Publishing
2004 Events, New Millennium Gallery
2002 Arts Council Collection Acquisitions, 1989 - 2002
ARTNSA, NSA Publications
Labyrinths, New Millennium Gallery
2001 Behind the Canvas, S Brittain / S Cook
1998 The Dictionary of Artists in Britain Since 1945, D Buckman
1996 Drawing Towards the End of a Century, NSA Publications
Another View: Art in St Ives, M Whybrow
“...Travelling long distances by sea, on the other hand, gives
us time. Travel is like death in that it requires mourning. The
light melancholy of watching a coastline recede is a necessary
observance. The caves sucked into the water’s surface by the
turning of invisible propellors - each subtly different, each
marbling a dissipating track which stretches back, an elastic
streamer - becomes hypnotic. They set us adrift on inward
voyages where we barely have enough sarcastic energy left to
stop ourselves seeing our frail barks upon the vasty deeps as
paradigmatic. Such time, such long hovering on the edge of
banality, is powerfully restorative. By the time approaching land
is announced we are free to be excited. Later, it seems to us that
only by having breathed the salt air of loss for long enough are
we able to make a properly carefree disembarkation. We have
adjusted. Our biological clocks are reset, our homoiothermal
balance has altered with the latitude, our internal maps - whose
every nautical mile has been felt as travelled - makes sense.
Behind us the ocean is criss-crossed with thousands upon
thousands of multi coloured streamers, a planet festooned
with farewells.”
‘Seven Tenths’, James Hamilton-Paterson
Published by Millennium to coincide with the exhibition ‘Voyage’ by Sax Impey
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers
Printed by Control Print (www.controlprint.co.uk)
Photography and portrait of Sax Impey by Andy Hughes (www.andyhughes.net)
ISBN 978-1-905772-28-5
S t r e e t - a n - P o lS t . I v e s C o r n w a l l0 1 7 3 6 7 9 3 1 2 1m a i l @ m i l l e n n i u m g a l l e r y. c o . u kw w w . m i l l e n n i u m g a l l e r y. c o . u k
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