Currents: Autumn exhibition 2018

A number of new paintings will be shown for the first time this autumn at Sladers Yard Gallery. The enclosed extract from the Gallery’s press release and further images and contact details are available here

Luke Elwes Ganga 10 2018 120x120cm

Since the beginning of this year, Luke Elwes has been working on a series of paintings based on the experience of travelling by boat along a stretch of the river Ganges. The Ganga paintings draw on the power of this sacred river flowing through the precarious lives of the people and cultures that have thrived throughout history on its banks. His method of working gives rise, he says, to a mood of reverie. Thinking about climate change, water shortages or floods, the power of the river to give and to take, he makes his gentle marks with rich colours and areas of emptiness. These he dissolves and floats, sometimes with river water or oil paint thinners which he allows to trickle or flow across his paper or canvas. The results seem to reflect light, inviting us to look into them quietly as if they were pools of water. There, nothing is permanent but everything is connected.