Matthew Roberts - Links

Terry Setch

http://www.terrysetch.co.uk

Terry Setch, Beach Structure, (date unknown)
© Terry Setch

Terry Setch, Beach Structure, (date unknown)
© Terry Setch

Terry's work was a revelation to me when I started my BA Fine Art course in Cardiff. He along with other forward looking painters, helped revolutionize painting practice from the mid 1960's through the 1980's. He was at the forefront of exciting developments in European and American painting that were happening at the turn of the 1980's. Landmark works include ‘Beach Construction’ 1981, and ‘Once upon a Time there was Oil III’, 1981-2. In these works Terry was breaking the mould in terms of the way an abstract painting could be made, and yet have powerful contemporary environmental references at the same time.

Terry Setch continues the particular tradition of English Landscape painting from Constable and Turner to Paul Nash, but broadens the scope of what the term Landscape Painting can be. Terry addresses the aftermath of American Abstract Expressionism; especially how we move on from Pollock. Most other painting has rejected Pollock, and gone down the less challenging Andy Warhol commercial route – along with most other forms of art; while Terry attempts to weld together various disparate strands of language and social condition in a broader and more open sense, while at the same time being faithful to the close observation of his immediate environment.

I will always remember standing in Terry's Bute Town Studio for the first time, in the deep wax and oil covered pit, where 14ft canvases were stretched from eyelets to Dexion frames. There was an industrial sense of scale and process to the work through the heavily fluid and organic manipulation of heavily petroleum based fluids.

Amidst this battlefield of creativity lay an inventive use of symbols and signifiers for the modern corruption of nature/landscape, formed from a process of intensive observation, ie the detritus and waste and spillage of heavy industry, as well as the products for public consumption made from the by production of crude oil; notably the car, and the plastic bottle, washed up as flotsam and jetsam on the shorelines from Cardiff to Penarth.

What marks Terry's work apart is the willingness to take on the chaotic random nature of material on a level tenfold that of an easel painter, allied to an imagination and vision as to where he wants painting to go, whilst tapping into, the language of English landscape painting.

I feel that I have learnt much, and been inspired by Terry’s working methods, allowing the principles to filter through, and apply what I need to my own working methods over the course of time, as part of the slow and initially painful process of establishing my own voice.

Emily Richardson

http://www.emilyrichardson.org.uk

Emily Richardson, Still from Cobra Mist, 2008, an Animate Projects film in progress. Info at:
www.animateprojects.org
www.myspace.com/animateprojects

© image copyright Emily Richardson 2008

I met Emily at Orford Ness last year, and she told me about her plans for a film based on the ‘spaces’ of Orford Ness. This film is an Animate commission to be shown in the autumn of 2008 on Channel 4.

I am curious to see a subject matter so close to my heart, seen through another artist’s eyes, and another medium, using time lapse and motion control techniques.

Fiona Long

http://fionalongart.co.uk

I am looking forward to working with the artist Fiona Long on The Pagoda Project, who I selected to help me, due to her tremendous enthusiasm, and the energy reflected by the diverse and fascinating work seen on her website fionalongart.co.uk.

Have a look at Urban Flux Installation here - mightily impressive for a Foundation Course!

Funnily enough there are strong connections here with Terry Setch’s work!