CONSTELLATION | Luke Elwes 2024

LUKE ELWES CONSTELLATION
EXHIBITION DATES – 19TH APRIL – 18TH MAY 2024

Frestonian Gallery is delighted to present ‘Constellation’ – a solo exhibition of work by Luke Elwes, spanning the body of work produced at and following his 2022 residency at Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Mayo, Ireland, as well as the most recent major works from Elwes’ extraordinary fifteen-year-plus engagement with the landscape at Landermere, Essex. These bodies of work converge much like two rivers, bringing different rates of flow and divergent temperaments, but each representing the universal themes and concerns of Elwes’ practice – the essential distillation and translation of a sense of place. The interactions and intermingling of sea and sky are evoked, with equal care and focus, from the slow and rhythmic rising and lowering of the estuary tides at Landermere, to the full force of the North Atlantic ocean that sweeps and shapes the jagged, island-flecked coastline of Mayo.

Concluding his recent essay on Elwes’ work, the writer and critic Andrew Lambirth writes:

“Initially, Elwes thought of titling this group of paintings ‘Drift’, but he realised that they had more to do with ‘constellations’; in his own words, ‘as in a group or cluster of similar things (forms and places), as well as a cluster of circling and returning thoughts and memories’. The notion of ‘constellations’ is borrowed from a series of 23 gouaches made by Joan Miró in 1940-41, through which he refreshed the poetic and calligraphic language of his art. Since they are all to do with the power of the imagination, with transparency, layering and intersecting forms, it’s easy to see why Elwes should be drawn to them.

Here is the distinguished French poet and art critic Jacques Dupin writing about Miró’s Constellations in his 1993 monograph on the artist: ‘Linear invention and rhythmic imagination are realised with miraculous purity. The interpenetration of graphism and chromaticism produces a counterpoint whose precision and spellbinding power irresistibly evoke music.’ Much the same could be said of Elwes’s fluent new paintings: through a radical and resourceful use of layering he by turns conceals and reveals his subject, in a kind of inspired calligraphic archaeology of painting. His researches offer us intriguing new prospects and perspectives loaded with meaning.”

LUKE ELWES | BRIDGET RILEY

The current exhibition VISION AND THE VISIONARY - LUKE ELWES | BRIDGET RILEY, offering a rare opportunity to view my work alongside one of our great modern British artists, has recently been reviewed in THE WEEK magazine. Further exhibition details here

Luke Elwes | Bridget Riley

VISION & VISIONARY 

26 JANUARY - 25 FEBRUARY 2023

 For the inaugural exhibition of its 2023 programme Frestonian Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of works on paper by Bridget Riley and Luke Elwes. This exhibition is a continuation & development of the exhibition of the same name at the Myung-Won Folk House Museum in Seoul, South Korea, which ran from October to November in 2022, and which juxtaposed Elwes’ and Riley’s work with sculpture by Korean artist Vakki and digital art by Canadian-Korean artist Sammy Lee. 

The Myung-Won exhibition, curated by Stephanie Kim and Kate Lee, saw a cross-section of Riley’s works on paper in gouache and print spanning from 1966-2020 shown opposite and alongside a contemporary selection of works from Elwes’ ongoing ‘Landermere’ series – a body of work that has itself spanned some 15 years – an extraordinary exploration into the qualities of light and atmosphere in a single place (Landermere Wharf in Essex) redolent of Monet’s engagement with the landscape at Giverny in the late 19th and early 20th Century.     

Riley and Elwes were, and are, both heavily influenced by the deconstructive & colour-theory elements of the 19th & 20th Century European Impressionist tradition, whilst having each developed entirely distinct modern / post-modern practices. In keeping with their forebears refined methodologies, their works each follow self-imposed restrictions of expression, yet find infinite variation within them. Riley’s early influence by the Impressionists and Pointillists – in particular Georges Seurat and Paul Cézanne – is reflected in her approach to reconstructing and reimagining the natural world in planes of pure colour and line. Her hard-edge form of abstraction is in many ways the opposite to Elwes’ more flowing, expressive and organic painting practice. Just as Riley eliminates all possible chance in the realisation of the final work, Elwes revels in it – allowing the very water that he is depicting to act as a medium in itself and shape the final expression of his densely layered and evocative works. 

Works such as Riley’s ‘Coloured Greys 2 & 3’ (1972), ‘Dominance Red, Green and Blue’ (1977) and ‘Places for Change’ (2009) each freeze in a single crisp moment the wave form, whilst the optical effect of the closely aligned linear planes of colour give the sensation of movement across the surface of the off-white paper grounds. Whereas Riley’s works give us lateral momentum, Elwes’ works provide dimensional depth – drawing the viewer into considering each square foot, indeed each square inch of the work with increasing scrutiny as the various layers of gouache, crayon, pigment and ink reveal themselves in turn. In the work of Elwes and Riley we are thus asked to consider again and again what constitutes a form, a movement and, ultimately, the nature of ‘landscape’ itself.  

Vision + The Visionary

Vision + The Visionary | Myungwon Museum, Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea.

(Bridget Riley + Luke Elwes, Sammy Lee + Vakki). 22 October - 22 November 2022

Lustrum Frestonian

Celebrating five years of Frestonian Gallery and featuring works by Adrian Berg, Tim Braden, Hannah Brown, Luke Elwes, Anna Freeman Bentley, Sam Herman, David Price, Sanne Maloe Slecht & Will Stein.

Exhibition runs 16 June through 6 August 2022. Further details here

Luke Elwes, Canopy 2022, mixed media on 2 sheets of paper 114x76cm

Luke Elwes was born in London and spent his early years in Iran, where the light and space of the desert were a formative influence. His work invariably derives from lengthy and deep connections with the various remarkable landscapes that he encounters in a semi-nomadic existence. His first show with Frestonian Gallery, in 2019, was a mediatative reflection on the River Ganges, whose course he followed over months of travelling from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. His 2021 show ‘Landermere’, meanwhile, presented vibrant and beautiful works derived from a single space – the eponymous Landermere Wharf in Essex, where Elwes keeps a studio as part of a decade-long engagement with the qualities of light and the submerged landscape. He has shown internationally since 1990.

Luke Elwes | Landermere

Frestonian Gallery London | 10 November - 22 December 2021

London Exhibition 2021

A series of new works on paper completed since spring 2020 will be exhibited at the Frestonian Gallery between 11 November and 22 December 2021. Further details here

Centred on a fragile wilderness of salt flats and tidal marshland in Essex, they capture the permeable and ever shifting line between water, earth and sky across the space of a year. Each image is begun and completed in one sitting – whatever the weather – and refers both to the immediacy a single encounter and the recollection of past experience. These recurring moments become one of a sequence, forming (through the cycle of seasons) a living record that reflects on the fluid interaction of water and ground while simultaneously employing the elements – rain, silt, river water - as both the medium and material in their making.

The Modern House

These paintings, originally commissioned for the London residence of a long time collector, are currently featured on The Modern House website - it’s good to see that they are still in situ 20 years on.

The Green Fuse | Summer 2020

‘The Green Fuse’ marks the reopening of the Frestonian Gallery and includes works by Adrian Berg, Tim Braden, Sam Herman, David Hockney and Bridget Riley. It runs until 5 September 2020 and further details are available on the gallery’s website

Luke Elwes, Overstory 1 2019, mixed media on paper 114x146cm

Extract from the Gallery press release:

We are delighted to announce our reopening following our temporary closure over the Covid-19 lockdown period. The group exhibition we will be presenting is a celebration of spring, summer, renewal, and the landscape – both real and imagined. The title refers to the 1934 Dylan Thomas poem The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower, a powerful invocation of the spirit of energy and the will to recover and regrow, that exists in all of nature… We present the work of established & respected artists at the height of their game, including the delicately rendered and highly complex surfaces of Luke Elwes’ watercolours, which Elwes makes both in and with the landscape, washing & infusing the paint with water from the Landermere marshes.