Triangulation (Anna's View From Liscia Bianca) Drawing

In early 1997 while recovering from an illness in San Francisco where I was living and running a record label #imperialdubrecordings a friend would drop films over for me to watch while housebound. Among those films was Michaelangelo Antonioni’s ‘L’Avventura’. It is not overstating the matter to say that my entire artistic oeuvre began and to this day informed by that viewing of the film. It set me on a course to return to art school, to study Italian neorealist film and European ‘Art’ film in general and Antonioni and Angelopoulos in great depth particularly. To study these films so comprehensively: their visual language, formal qualities of cinematography, how they were written, constructed, shot and edited - to achieve a holistic composition more than the sum of it’s parts - to understand why I had such a strong reaction to that first viewing… and to then apply that to static 2D imagery remains a foundational basis for all my subsequent work. All the ‘places’ in the pieces for my ‘Carbon Series’ are, as Jonathan Meades so eloquently puts it: ‘The mediation of place through mind’ He also says that Romantic Landscapes paintings are the result of; ‘a mind touched by mysticism and intimations of sublimity… the place itself could never match its representation; In revisiting the places in this series - those places which have over the years accrued meaning beyond the initial encounter is to re-examine their importance, to recover and depict their sublimated power on me and thus my work. In that sense the image shown here could never fully carry that weight of personal history, almost the self-mythology instilled in it. I may try a version or versions of this piece again But let’s unpick what is attempted to be instilled and depicted in the piece: In the first act as it were of ‘L’Avventura’ a group are on a boating trip around the Aeolian Islands, they explore a small rocky island (Isola Liscia Bianca) and one of the party, Anna, disappears. Her lover and her friend search for her but she is not found, thereafter they and the film continue and the disappearance is neither solved nor addressed save to provide an ambivalent yet anxious- that is to say existentially alienating atmosphere and ground within which the principal characters actions take place. In ‘the piece’ we can see two islands of the Aeolian Group. the question is; from where and from who’s viewpoint are we seeing?. This is Ana’s viewpoint from Liscia Bianca looking towards Basiluzzo and, in the distance, Stromboli. ‘Anna’s View’ here reasserts a key trope of Antonioni’s (it is also present in the films of both Theo Angelopoulos and of Andre Tarkovsky and the link between these three great directors the subject of my possible Mphil/Phd thesis: the writer, poet and screen writer Tonino Guerra)…the important character or propulsive agency may be unseen, offscreen, we cannot be certain but is that which provides the vital yet unstable framework for what we do see, again ‘the mediation of place through mind’. So in one sense this piece provides the ‘missing shot’ from ‘L’Avventura, the shot that solves the mystery of the disappearance. But it is also my view from Liscia Bianca, from ’L’Avventura’ since from that viewpoint I am looking forward to the period seeing and studying Italian Neo-Realist film to seeing Rosselini’s ’Stromboli’ towards my future through a kind of Stendahl’s Mirror. In another sense the eruption of the volcano and the downpour (is it ash, is it rain?) infers the cyclic nature of creation within this sublime void. *As with all elliptically formatted works in the Carbon series, the black oval matte is to indicate the correct passepartout and framing aspects. Principally for shipping purposes (given their dimensions) the works are supplied unframed but with instructions for correct framing and hanging.

Drawing:Charcoal on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:110.2 W x 52 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.