Luke Elwes' third solo exhibition with Frestonian Gallery - 'Caldera' - is a vivid evocation of an extraordinary journey by the artist through the Puna de Atacama - an unbounded high-altitude wilderness straddling Chile, Bolivia and north-west Argentina. This is not a living space, containing almost no roads or inhabitants, but an otherworldly realm stretching over vast distances and empty horizons with silent landscapes that range from burnt red and orange valleys to black and white plateaus, from shimmering salt pans and mountain passes ringed with volcanic cones and craters to wind blasted tracts composed of 400-million-year-old sandstone outcrops and ghostly fields of white pumice carpeted with shifting dunes of ash and mineral dust.
The drawings Elwes made on site, incorporating the mineral dust of the desert, became a starting point for the resulting sequence of fifteen large-scale paintings. In response to those first raw impressions washes of pigment were laid down and reworked without correction, in a process more closely attuned to the large works on paper of recent years than the more meditative recollections on canvas which shaped his earlier bodies of work on canvas. The vivid immediacy of these new images nevertheless carries echoes of other times and places for the artist, from the early work in Australia, as well as the Tibetan Plateau and the African desert. Here is a world of deeply layered time experienced through a fleeting presence, one that leaves only the faintest trace on a space of geological upheaval in which a much older story of rock formation, eruption and seismic movement continues to unfold; a narrative that exists beyond our collective memory and comprehension.
BOOK LAUNCH AND SIGNING
As well as the opening of the exhibition of 'Caldera', the 11th November sees the official launch and book signing by the artist of the first major monograph on Elwes' work. Published by Anomie Publishing the monograph covers 40 years of Elwes' practice - wth works arising from from the deserts of Australia, through English marshlands; the wooded hills of Connecticut and the winding trail of the Ganges from the Himalayas to the bay of Bengal. The publication provides a fascinating insight into the process and output of a truly international artist, with a new major essay by Andrew Lambirth (The Spectator) and an in-depth interview by Lily Le Brun (Art Quartely / The Economist).
NOTES ON THE ARTIST
Luke Elwes was born in 1961 and now lives in London. His early years were spent in Iran, where the light and space of the mountains and desert were a formative influence. He studied at Camberwell school of Art (UAL) and holds undergraduate and research degrees from Bristol University and Birkbeck, University of London. His work has been exhibited worldwide, with recent institutional exhibitions including the Museo della Grafica, Palazzo Lanfranchi (Italy) + Fondazione Bottari Lattes (Italy), Young Museum and Estorick Collection (UK), the Albers Foundation (USA) and the Myung-Won Museum (Seoul, Korea). His work is held in numerous public and corporate collections including: The Bayer Collection; Christie's Contemporary Art Collection; National Trust Foundation for Art; Imperial College, University of London; Merrill Lynch Collection; Coopers & Lybrand; N M Rothschild; Deutsche Hypo Bank London; Hoares Bank Collection; Societe Generale, London; Electra Collection; Europa Collection, London & the Freshfields Collection.
