Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Artsway, Hampshire
3 July ' 15 August
Reviewed by: Stephen Riley
The work is in three spaces, that can be read left to right. In the first is what looks like evidence from a forensic investigation. Daly discovered by chance that a mythical character, a will–o’–the–wisp named Laurence, was reputed to have stalked the New Forest since Saxon times. Laurence was supposed to have used a lamp in the dark night of the forest to lure the unwary to their doom in one of its countless bogs, and this part of the work suggests a rational, methodical enquiry into whom he might have been. In the second room is a 360° photograph, taken from one of the more barren highpoints of the forest. Two sides are lined with tall trees; on the other two, scrubland gives way to a darkening sky. It gives a hint of the feeling one might have on finding oneself lost in dwindling light in this largely featureless landscape. That hint of unease is an indication of what awaits in the third room.
Here, the viewer is caught in the space between two large projections, that endeavour to recreate the experience of being in the forest in the dead of night, catching fleeting glimpses of light coming through the trees. Tantalisingly, fragments of the foreground are momentarily illuminated and then stolen back into the darkness. The work evokes that primal, probably now irrational, fear that forests still hold for us, the fear that those who told tales of Laurence all those years ago exploited in their listeners, and that makers of movies like The Blair Witch Project still make use of. Here the cool, rational feel of the first room meets its antithesis ' some residual primordial part of the human condition.
Writer detail:
Stephen Riley
stephenriley8@hotmail.com |
www.stephenrileyart.com
Venue detail:
ArtSway
Station Road, Sway SO41 6BA
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