iPhone shots of the studio from the past couple of months.

 http://www.newbloodart.com/

 New Blood Art specialise in original art online by emerging artists, and hold regular exhibitions of the artists they represent in their Chiswick gallery.  NBA have already show my work in the Financial Times and The Observer as an artist to invest in for the future.  

Nightlight by Steven James Ingman, Derby City Museum & Art Gallery, May 2010.

Through a mass of photography, painting, sculpture, video, craft and textile, Annual Open exhibitions attract a wide, eclectic, diverse and strange concoction of artworks in a variety of thinking, application and media from both amateur, hobbyist, graduate and professional artist.  One major draw, apart from attractive cash prize rewards, is the selection for a solo show exhibition in the host gallery. 

This solo show is often awarded based only upon a small selection of works (often one or two), and is an ideal opportunity to develop an existing body of work, or to push studio practice into a new area of thinking with the support of the awarding institution. Not necessarily ‘best in show’, the award has to reflect whether there is a potential in the work shown to form a coherent exhibition, a significant development in the artists practices, or an interesting discourse that reflects the Institutions own working agenda (suitable for the themes within contemporary art and craft, the building, a permanent collection or the region it is in).  The prize provides an arena for an emergent artist to exhibit on a larger, more established institutional scale. Daunting to both selected artist and selectors alike, the exhibition is a promotion of both the Open and the artist, and thus should reflect their mutual ambitions. 

Currently, there is a wealth of artistic talent in the East Midlands, and recent successes by Nottingham Castle Open solo show prize winners reflects the importance of such Open competitions, and moreover the forum that artists can show and discuss their work in.  Conjuntos by Geoff Diego Litherland, and Metahang by Simon Withers, two past solo show winners at Nottingham Castle, clearly pushed both artists to work within the possibilities (or constraints) of the Castle’s exhibition spaces, altering and evolving their own thinking into new ways of exhibiting with either the Collection itself, or how to house a series of works within, or in response to, a Heritage building and non-white cube gallery.  Even Animals by Nadim Chaudry, Castle Open prize-winner at New Art Exchange, is one of the strongest emerging artist exhibitions I have seen this year, again clearly showing the strength and calibre of artists applying to regional Opens, showing their commitment to what a solo show means upon their own practice and personal development, but also to the institution supporting and showcasing the work.  Recent Derby City Art Gallery solo show winner, Steven James Ingman, is the most recent Nottingham artist to join the ranks and lineage of the region’s Open ‘winners’.

Selected from Derby’s Open in 2008, Night Light is unashamedly a painting show depicting night time street scenes, with many references to the act of painting and the traditional, representational historical associations therein.  In a modest exhibition space, groups of paintings are haphazardly hung where lone paintings are placed amongst triptychs, and there is an unease with the variable viewing height as you tip-toe and crouch to get a proper viewpoint.  This use of space makes one view the room first, only noting the individual works as you are drawn in, complimenting the range of smaller (and stronger) paintings depicting abstract smears of light in paint, amongst the more obvious likenesses of buildings, street lamps and cars. These pictorial, painterly renderings derived source photography are shown alongside more baron, ambiguous works.

Each work is devoid of physical human presence, but the impact of urbanisation and of a City’s populous is clear, creating a general sombre mood across each work that shows Western cityscapes and transport infrastructure in a dark, emotive land.  This absence of man and the gloomy atmospherics does remind me of Christopher Campbell’s night paintings, sparking similarities to Geezers, 2009, where the focus is centred around the supernatural glow of a street lamp over a white transit van.  His Trembling Hands, 2008, has an emphasis on the glaring lights of a petrol station forecourt, highlighting the cars amongst the blackness of night, perhaps referring to Hoppers Nighthawks in a subtle way as Ingman seems to share.  George Shaw’s dusk paintings of abandoned social club or public houses do also compare to the lonely, bleakness of Ingman’s work too, but are more socio-politically charged and the viewer is left with more of an emotive response, or perhaps empathy to the abandonment.  Ingman has more of a kinetic or electric energy within his work as the artificial light is his focus.

There is a playful enjoyment of the media, showing application of palette knife work through to more subtle glazes and eloquent brush work, but in the 2010 paintings I am glad to see some this of variety rejected as the work matures. There is some unease in the earlier works as the gestural impasto is distracting, becoming formally unnecessary as it often appears in the foreground of the scene (Lego Brick Bollard, and Treehouse Dreams, both 2009), emphasising spatial depth physically with the paint.  These works suggest an inclination towards 1920’s American Modern Realist notions of atmospherics, combined with an admiration for lens derived painting techniques using tone and shadow for compositional construction.  Even the colours seem retardaire using earthy browns, deep blues and warm oranges - the palette does not seem to reflect the modern urban scrawl of the City.  Looking like direct reproductions of long shutter-speed, over-exposed snap shots, we are all too familiar with this technique and iconography, leaving little room to question what Ingman is exploring through paint.

It is suggested that the work was borne out of an intoxicated, sensory altered perception to the world and an alcoholic induced ‘eureka’ moment. I think this is where the camera serves its purpose, an experiment to simulate what the retina may momentarily see or distort; the paintings are not quite successful in capturing this moment.

This, however, is not the case for all of the works. There is the beginnings of a more analytical approach – you can see the thought and progression from one painting to the next, showing them to be paintings about the act of painting, and the evolution of the referential (representational) elements that were important in the earlier the work being rejected in favour of a more selective and minimal approach.  Flattening the perspective, and referring to the urban architecture by a series of thick lines, subtle tonal shades, large flat areas of colour or geometric forms (One Way, 2009) is the first step towards Ingman’s study of more abstract painting practice, away from the previous Hopper connotations the works seem to reflect.  By simplifying the formal structure, stripping away the detail and the real world accuracy, Ingman leads us to understand a more personable relationship to his memory of the scene he depicts, and a journey away from using the photograph to paint directly from.  In Silent Reflections, 2010, we now lose the motion blur, the orbic glow of street lights and the stream of car headlights, which may still be apparent in works such as Reflective Elemental, 2009, but are stronger images as the street references become less obvious and the concentration is on contemporary architecture, space and a different use of the media.  It is not necessarily the abstraction that I find interesting, but the more selective parts or insinuation of the street that Ingman now rejects/presents.  These constructions look like they belong on a lunar surface space station, all shiny, reflective and metallic, and the deep tonal blacks for the skyline emphasise the void of space even further.

Upon leaving the gallery with Department Store, Memory within the urban space and Structural Tranquillity (all 2010) in mind as you pass through the gift shop (acting as an airlock between the gallery and Derby city), you are confronted with the uniform, concrete world that Ingman depicts.  His street scenes are so very familiar, yet unnervingly alien to us, perhaps a comment of the City Centre as a series of familiar brands and shop fronts, not necessarily recognisably British, but more global as commercialisation shapes and de-individualises our high streets and market towns. Ignoring the title of Department Store as an indicator of the scene, Ingman has removed the bright yellow golden arches, the Subway sandwich boards, the Wetherspoons and the hyper-colour of advertising from his buildings we view a dark, sombre, soulless, ethereal, characterless alien landscape where multinational brands have not yet trod.  A dystopian parallel universe known to any Gaiman or Pullman reader, where artificial light guides our way, fearful of the shadows or what lurks in the darkness, and these monolithic, shiny, metallic blocks of buildings are the monuments of this modern urban conurbation; is this why no human dares to treat into the light, and why is the black dark void in Silent Reflections so tempting and enticing?

Making Ingman’s journey more personal through the concentration on contemporary architecture, relying less on quirky camera techniques, whilst focusing on abstraction and ambiguity is where his strengths now lie.  Even looking at the exhibition catalogue whilst writing this, the placement of works across the page spread shows the vast difference from the work of 2009 to those of 2010; there is an intelligible move from representation, to more subtle and restrained painterly decisions about form, shape and a suggestion of a metropolis, as apposed to a direct depiction of cityscapes at night.  Referencing perhaps digital culture or digital manipulation, the buildings look more like polygon outlines, the structure of computer gaming composites, or neon steel girders in the background only becoming clear when the image is ‘rendered’.  Instead of thick applications, paint is almost baron in places, yet artificially glossy.   Even the ‘light’ to which the shows title refers to is clean and iridescent, losing the yellowy-orange hue of Treehouse Dreams, 2009, and Number 58, 2009. I wonder whether Ingman has begun to break up his photographic source material, rebuilding them during the painting process that creates the reading of the work somewhere between fiction, memory and reality.

The exhibition is a strong example of how the Solo show prize has challenged and benefited Ingman’s practice into creating some work that is clearly on a path towards a more informed dialogue in his painting, and the relevance of it amongst contemporary painting practices.  He has had the time and pressures, to look beyond his work and his original influences, and work closely with Derby Museum and his mentor, Mik Godley, to present a coherent body of work that shows signs of his painterly maturity.  The new developments in Ingman’s paintings are the underlying strengths here, mixing the work amongst earlier pieces emphasises the demand for a more liminal and analytical approach (not just a literal translation of painting from a photo) without loosing his original line of enquiry – the light in the night.

Tristram Aver

Night Light runs until 4 July 2010.

Derby Museum and Art Gallery

Monday - 11am to 5pm

Tuesday to Saturday - 10am - 5pm

Sunday and Bank Holiday - 1pm to 4pm

http://www.steveningman.co.uk/home.html

http://www.derby.gov.uk/leisureculture/museumsgalleries/derby_museum_and_art_gallery.htm

Hello dear Reader,

First of all, I must thank you for taking the time to visit my website and having a rummage around. 

I have so busy as of late, taking a year off from my practice (but never quite leaving it entirely) whilst concentrating on my curatorial practice and some freelance work, I am beginning to get back into it with renewed vigor and ideas coming out of every orifice; too much to commit to a piece of work, but soon! 

Working with both visual artists and art on a daily basis, and seeing such strong work being produced throughout Nottingham and the country/the world, I have  become enlightened by the talent out there, learned new discourses within painting, and creating good networks of fellow curators and artists. Yet also becoming very creatively frustrated... this will change.  A promise to myself.

Just a few more things to polish off, then i'm back.  I have a few things half-finished, half-conceived and half-arsed in the studio, so please, if you are interested, come back in the near future to see some sneaky peeks.

 Here, I will mostly ramble, moan or rant.  The cynical man cometh.

Ta!