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Dark StarJonathan Anderson

25 September - 06 November 2010

This first one man show by Swansea based artist Jonathan Anderson, is a sculptural installation which draws upon archetypal imagery, creating an anomalous, slightly malevolent presence within Mission Gallery’s space. Anderson works with coal dust to create loaded, archetypal forms that provide an ideal vehicle for the exploration of poetic metaphor and transformation, he describes coal as ‘a dark, mysterious, almost mythical material’.

‘Dark Star’ takes our thoughts beyond man-made mechanisms and dirt. Anthony Shapland writes in his catalogue essay ‘Earthbound’; “Its structure and dynamic is as far from inertia as we can get, an implosion where there should be an explosion, a centrifugal/centripetal force, pushing matter outwards and drawing it in simultaneously. Carbon – the building block of life – glistens back with endless possibilities. A million different crystalline surfaces that reflect, diffuse and scatter light. We get reflection and absorption simultaneously, we get a beginning and an end and the possibility of change. He has made this moment sculptural, halted the action and presented us with a constructed object that holds this point of change before us for examination”.

It has been said that Anderson believes in the power of art as a gateway to another way of thinking, as a microcosm of the universe from a human perspective, a tool for meditation on the cyclical nature of things. His combination of the man-made, manufactured, fundamental object with elemental materials and the scale of his works, certainly points toward this. His work is a reminder that we are born and then we live and then we die. It is a reminder of the inevitable. It is both heavy and fragile, earthbound, moribund – constantly on the verge of being extinguished.

Jonathan Anderson graduated from Swansea Metropolitan University in 2007 and is now based in Swansea. Past group shows have included Crafted at Oriel Myrddin, Carmarthen, 2009, Ground, Wrexham Arts Centre 2009, and To the Buddha: Veils and Voids at St Davids Hall, Cardiff, 2010. In April 2010 he was the recipient of the Richard and Rosemary Wakelin Purchase Prize at The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea.

 

"Jonathan Anderson has utilised coal as a material in his work for the last two years. Aware of the temptation to slip into cultural cliché, Anderson presents an ongoing poetic drift of marks and symbols upon found objects including lining paper, cardboard, souvenir trinkets and bank-notes. A smear of coal dust becomes a residue, like a stain, of past industry. Formerly seen as the material invigorating many Welsh communities, notwithstanding the hardships endured in mining it - now perceived as a dirty fuel that is endangering the planet, coal has taken on an ambivalent status and what once was celebrated is now shunned. Anderson describes coal as ‘a dark, mysterious, almost mythical material'. By tainting everyday objects with this evocative and malevolent substance he plays with archetypal forms that resonate within the human psyche."

Tim Davies   2009

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