An immersive art exhibition by Canadian landscape artist Dale Inglis has opened in Walworth Town Hall, celebrating the newly renovated building’s exhibition space. The exhibition is a ‘Surround Art’ show, in 360°, on two levels, where the paintings are hung to provide a complete wraparound art experience for the visitor, in an acoustically designed space that reduces background and external sound to a minimum.
Created over a 14-year period in his studio in Walworth’s Pullens Yards, ‘River Crossing’ comprises 21 original paintings, collages and screen prints depicting the unique Thames landscape of Southwark and the City of London.
Featuring many of the borough’s most iconic landmarks, including Cannon Street Railway Bridge, Southwark Bridge, Bankside and the Shard, ‘the exhibition represents Inglis’s ongoing fascination with bridges and riverscapes, which he shares with previous artists like Oscar Kokoschka, Claude Monet and James Whistler, in a history of the Thames, in Art, stretching back to the 16th century.
Inglis says his fascination with the city’s river and bridges gradually came to focus on Cannon Street Railway Bridge area simply through the frequency of his visits: “The 360 degrees view of the river and surroundings from the platform and the train is breath-taking”, he explains.
Working with a range of materials, from mixed media on canvas and panels, to oil on paper and spray paint on metal, Inglis furnishes each panel with an earlier life history which informs the preliminary stages of the work’s development, but which, ultimately, may almost entirely be submerged.
“There is no tabula rasa”, says Inglis, whose collage materials are “literally pieces of London”, taken from London hoardings, corrugated iron fences and the London Underground.
The artist’s distinctive use of colour has evolved over a number of years. His earlier work is based on the primary colours (red, yellow and blue), frequently unmixed, while his later work is characterised by the much older palette of black, white, red and yellow, claiming he tends to follow the mediaeval practice of using the colours unmixed, “to avoid sapping them of their purity and power.”
Exhibition Catalogue: https://tinyurl.com/2bvu8aa9
‘A Portrait of Dale Inglis [Film]: https://tinyurl.com/4z4p4yet
Walworth Town Hall until November 4th (10.00am to 6:00 pm)
