MARK SURRIDGE | ALIGNMENTS
Alignment Ritual oil and illminite on canvas 80 x 120 cm
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Thoughts linger. Hesitations flicker. Inscriptions to a lesser god. A god of the forgotten footpath, of the newly made track, a redundant circle. Ordered alchemy, wet underfoot. A stile, a glum well, a cobbled wall stretching across the moorland. A pitfall, a digression, an impasse. A rise, a vista, a departure. The ground is plotted, quadrangles of history remapped across curling pages while memories unfold. A train is set in motion, a recollection carried to a new destination, or a return, back to the waiting platform. Home. Peculiarities mingle, half hidden. Draw them out. Draw. Sing for your supper. Cast a weather eye across the farmlands. Suspended stained glass colours the gaze. Beyond, the single ploughed field among the heathen. The grass is still, but a storm is brewing. Click of the kettle, click of the laptop, the barometer registers the shift, the reverse pressure, the wider world distraction. Chores wait, the guitar waits, time doesn’t. Turn back to the primordial, the gouging of symbols, meaningful and meaningless as the ancients; cover the roof with a weather map, a mirror of the paint crust floor beneath. Distillation and expansion A play, a commotion. Hills sweep under the brush, a tunnel escapes, streams decant, a change is spread, a trouble is poured. Motifs half recalled float on the surface, are the surface, but not the event. Between and beneath are the narratives, the occasional whisper of a mystic’s dna. Metaphors drift like ice floes, metaphors of metaphors. Aerial maps of molecular activity, the height indeterminate. An inroad for the observer, an outroad, too. A passing place, a landmark thirty feet tall. A constituent element frozen this moment, thawed the next, its past submerged but still visible. Half figuration loiters in the shadows, a distance, a proximity. Exactness is spilt. Horizonless referents, tilting environments. Clouds coalesce beneath the stretcher, surfacing only when the plane is reorientated. Gravity is absent, but the bye-laws of physics, of abstraction, abound. Principles are reconstituted, traces impressed. Re-fused shards of pastoral romance. Depth is given, depth is removed. A plumb line. Spirit. Level. Crossing over a surface, a void. The canvas is an unfenced plot.
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Everything is movement The gesture is witness to the physical, the assimilation through action. It testifies to the glimpse, the movement of the mind. Poetry precise care broken by fissures of graffiti. The shaman sweeps away evil spirits, his spirit broom pushing paint across the intimate landscape. A brush on a stick; an archaeological gift for the future. Everything is breath Words, like shy dogs, lurk in the background, wanting to approach, to be uttered, to be recited, repeated, resung, restrung. A line is chanted, echoed through history. A line is drawn. A breath taken. A line meant for healing.
Everything is time
Tempo shifts its weight from one leg to the other. Restlessness is inevitable and essential. Circles dervish and swarm across the surface, a rhythmical pacing, a temporal reconfiguration, between the paintings, across the walls. Everything is the medium The medium is the passage. Conditions are mixed on the palette, the deep of seasons crash, withdraw. Abandoned thoughts are rekindled through the illuminate. Shapes sheer, evaporate, recondense. A precipitation of form. An impulse is earthed.
Introduction by Neil McLeod | Artist, Writer, and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Falmouth University
Alignment Dark oil and illminite on canvas 120 x 150 cm
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Land Mantle Blue oil and illminite on canvas 120 x 150 cm
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Land Mantle Ochre oil and illminite on canvas 120 x 150 cm
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Alignment Blue oil and illminite on canvas 120 x 150 cm
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Alignment Golden oil and illminite on canvas 150 x 280 cm
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Xenolith Green oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 120 cm
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Xenolith Yellow oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 120 cm
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Xenolith Grey oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 120 cm
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Xenolith Pink oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 120 cm
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Lithosphere Grey and Yellow oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 120 cm
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Lithosphere Grey and Lemon Yellow oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 120 cm
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Lithosphere Earth Brown and Orange oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 120 cm
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Alignment Earth and Sun oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 110 cm
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Alignment Yellow Void oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 110 cm
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Alignment Earth and Sun oil and illminite on canvas 100 x 110 cm
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Liminoid Alignment oil and illminite on canvas 120 x 160 cm
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Core Grey
Core Grey and Blue
oil and illminite on paper
oil and illminite on paper
27 x 34 cm
27 x 34 cm
Core Earth Brown and Orange I
Core Earth Brown and Orange II
oil and illminite on paper
oil and illminite on paper
27 x 34 cm
27 x 34 cm
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Core Yellow and Grey II
Core Yellow and Grey I
oil and illminite on paper
oil and illminite on paper
27 x 34 cm
27 x 34 cm
Core Yellow and Orange oil and illminite on paper 34 x 51 cm
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ALIGNMENTS 50° 31′ 31.28″ N, 4° 27′ 33.46″ W Alignments: Traces, signs and veils, obscured by time, are re imagined in this new series of paintings. Particular sites around Bodmin Moor are ‘mapped’, remembered and transformed into works of ‘equivalence of experience’. Notions of archaeology are explored on canvas, where half hidden images appear in the paint, revealing excavated codes and syntaxes. Some of the paintings are divided into two parts, suggesting the passing of accumulated time or the movement of an ultra violet scanning device, searching for meaning. Mark Surridge, 2014
CV 1981 - 84 Maidstone College of Art (BA Hons) 2007 - 09 Falmouth University, MA Fine Art 1997 Moved to Cornwall Elected Member of Newlyn Society of Arts Currently a part time lecturer in Fine Art at Falmouth University SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2014 2012 2010 2008 2006 2005 2004 2003 2001 2000
Alignments Three Waters, Millennium Field Lines, Beardsmore Gallery, London Openings, Millennium Enfolding, Beardsmore, London Air Voices, New Millennium, St. Ives Elemental Secrets, Beardsmore London Weather Changes, New Millennium, St. Ives Land Veils, Beardsmore, London Elemental Landscapes, New Millennium, St. Ives Beardsmore, London
SELECTED MIXED EXHIBITIONS 2012 2011 2009 2007 2006 2005
National Open Art Competition, Chichester National Open Art Competition, London ING Discerning Eye Exhibition, Mall Galleries Mini - Meta, Beardsmore, London Art Now Cornwall, Tate St. Ives NSA Summer Exhibition, Goldfish, Penzance NSA Critics Choice, LSG, Truro, selected by - - Norbert Lynton NSA Christmas Exhibition, Campden Gallery - - selected by Nicholas Usherwood
2004 2003 2002 1999 - 14 2005, 01, 00 2005, 03, 02
Critics Choice, Newlyn Art Gallery, Newlyn - - selected by John Russell Taylor Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Glyndbourne Weather Report 2, Newlyn Art Gallery, Newlyn Critics Choice, Newlyn Art Gallery, selected by - - Joan Bakewell The Space Between, Merriscourt Gallery, Oxford London Art Fair,, Business Design Centre, London Hunting Art Prizes, Royal College of Art, London - - (prize winner 2001) Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS 2014 2012 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2002 2003 2001 2000
Alignments, Catalogue, Millennium Three Waters, Catalogue, Millennium Openings, Catalogue, Millennium Post: The Journal for Arts, Culture and Research - - Falmouth University Revolver Art Cornwall Enfolding, Catalogue, Beardsmore Art Now Cornwall, Tate Publications St. Ives 1975-2005 : Art Colony in Transition - - Peter Davies Air Voices, Catalogue, New Millen nium The Guardian, Artist of the Month Grand Designs Magazine, Feature, August edition Elemental Secrets, Catalogue, Beardsmore Weather Changes, Catalogue, New Millennium ArtNSA, Newlyn Society of Artists publication Land Veils, Catalogue, Beardsmore Elemental Landscapes, Catalogue, New Millennium Exhibition Catalogue, Beardsmore Gallery
Private collections in UK, Europe and USA
Published by Millennium to coincide with the exhibition ‘Alignments’ by Mark Surridge All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers
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