This autumn, The Nine British Art is delighted to present a new exhibition broadening the horizons of Jeremy Gardiner’s evocative body of work chronicling the coast of southern England. Journeying from Kent to Cornwall, this series of 32 paintings in South By Southwest reveal how Gardiner has transformed the way we think about landscape painting, existing in a fascinating place between abstraction and figuration, effortlessly juxtaposing the coast and land, geological and architectural forms.
South By Southwest also finds Gardiner increasingly interested in man-made interventions in the landscape, be that the beach huts in Ballard Down and Promenade, Swanage, Dorset or the famousfortification in The Key to England, Dover Castle, Kent. Intriguingly, though, these are often almost-incidental architectural details. They remind us, as Gardiner puts it, “how small and recent mankind’s interception has been… like characters in the story of a landscape.”
This is the key to Gardiner’s work; the literal aspects just one layer in a tactile, chiselled landscape full of modulated colour, reflecting the rough-hewn drama of the coast.
The Nine British Art’s most successful contemporary artist, Gardiner’s previous exhibitions here memorably explored Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall. These places have become embedded in his psyche yet still entice and encourage new approaches and ideas in South By Southwest - in the widescreen Above Porthleven, Cornwall, the eye isn’t drawn to the iconic tower so often battered by Atlantic storms, but the expanse of harbour in this working port, and the glowering hills imposing themselves on the town.
It’s these hints at the ever-changing mood and atmosphere of the coast which give Jeremy Gardiner’s work a rare power, which we are delighted to bring to wider audiences after his shows at St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery and Falmouth Art Gallery were curtailed earlier this year.
WEDNESDAY 7TH – WEDNESDAY 28TH OCTOBER
Monday – Saturday, 11am – 5pm
To assist with social distancing please contact the gallery by phone or email to view the show
