My June 2020 Solo at the Westminster Reference Library, WC2 (behind the National Portrait Gallery) has been postponed because of Covid-19 until a later date. Meanwhile join me in a VIRTUAL STUDIO TOUR of the exhibition by visiting NEWS on this website or https://vimeo.com/424815728/02a34fbd21
The following essay by critic and artist JILLIAN KNIPE was written to accompany the show.
LANDSCAPE IN TIME AND TIME IN LANDSCAPE
by Jillian Knipe 2020 (International Association of Art Critics).
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind
Emily Dickinson, 1890
Whirlwinds of scatterings and swirls of detritus spread across Elizabeth Hannaford’s canvases, raising the relentless issue of time. Or rather, of timing. Are we pre, mid or post crisis when it comes to considering the natural world? Are these images prompted by where we’re at or where we’re headed? Perhaps Elizabeth’s work encompasses all these times as the scenery of her mind’s eye.
The landscape has always held a fascination for artists as a reflection on society, social status and industrialisation. Now we are witness to a new phase of commentary: landscape and the environment. Though take care here. Indigenous cultures have much longer been reflecting on the state of the land, not only as a conduit for cultural stories, but also for what the land actually is and does. The wildlife it breeds and supports. The weathers it drives and is subjected to. Crucially, their images seem timeless. And it is these images from which we westerners now take our cue.
Landscape paintings usually unfold their stories slowly. Often incomprehensibly. Elizabeth has painted the expanses of remote places she has visited, walked around and across. In each, the landscape is vast, stunning, largely unpopulated and often hostile to human existence - Namibia’s spectacular deserts, Arizona’s rich sandy red, Iceland’s stark ground and stunning light - these are places of hardship and the resulting works are spare, minimal and textured. The artist’s hand produces works which settle on her viewpoint, though there is no finite understanding of them; definitely for us, probably for her too. It is not possible to specifically discern what is from where and which time. The places we travel tend to journey within us, beyond places on a map. So while there is Namibia, Iceland and Arizona, there are also craters, glaciers and childhood hiking expeditions. The paintings then become places of arrival, leaving and memory, with strong undercurrents of wonder and absence.
Beginning in 2015, Elizabeth’s ‘Broken World’ series steps towards the presence of something gaunt. Inspired by landscapes, shattered by the devastations of war, natural disasters and climate change, they seem like sites, not of contemporary language, but of ancient sound, reverberating through the ages and into the unforeseen. Forever warning. They recall how Anselm Keifer’s barren and devastated landscapes shift in thought between the devastation of a culture resulting from war and the devastation of a land resulting from climate change. So we find the meaning of paintings is not only elusive, but also changes over time.
‘Green World Burning I’ and ‘II’ stand out as quintessential paintings of the exhibition. Green is the colour of life and new growth. It’s not supposed to burn, yet it is. It is burning in the treacherous Australian Summer fires. It is burning according to the Greta Thunberg-led banners splashed with ‘Our House is on Fire’ as we look away. Here, Elizabeth’s works spark a vexing question. Will the black hole suck up the green as black holes inevitably do or will the green morph the suctioning gape to revive a brightness of colour in its cheeks?
This is an exhibition of paintings exposing a global warning concern which is pacing like an ever-expanding rolling stone in our direction. These works don’t scream at us so there’s no need to cover our ears. We can bear to listen as we look and think further. Having spent much of our supposedly civilised lives in the dark of environmental ignorance, we need to emerge with purpose and not with the startling light which reality glares in our pupils, blinding us to its cause. Elizabeth Hannaford’s images encourage a bearable shift towards acknowledging the pain which is now ingrained in our landscape, opening possibilities for the essential and essentially collective journey ahead.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
T.S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’, ‘Four Quartets’, 1936
Studio shot of “GREEN WORLD BURNING I & II, with two related works on the floor. To view Hannaford’s lockdown studio tour of her solo show, click the NEWS link on the HOME page, or visit: https://vimeo.com/424815728/02a34fbd21