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World
without end
Tony Lloyd’s paintings depict stark and often deserted landscapes, sombre and arresting tableaux that seem to have been excised from a wider narrative. The broad perspectives of mountains, deserted highways or a panorama of city lights are cinematic in their scope, while the treatment of the objects within them – whether a group of distinctly rendered tree trunks, a road or an aircraft picked out against a blurred, suggestive ground – is decidedly photographic. World without end represents a body of work considerably influenced by Lloyd’s time in Italy. During his residency he became fascinated by the writings of the 16th century heretic Giordano Bruno and his “ideas on everything from alchemy to alien life”, ideas that, he comments, “became the background to my travels through the wintery European landscape”. His research also led him from the “historical to the geological to the cosmological”, the combination of which coincided with an existing interest in the relationship between the natural and the constructed worlds. The meeting of these worlds is clearly represented in scenes that range from the dramatic – a starkly-lit road disappearing into the darkness of night, a blimp suspended in the sky above a snowy mountain range – to the otherworldly – alien-looking craft suspended above a deserted landscape, or mountains now surveyed not by a blimp but by flying saucer. Characterised by high-contrast light and shadow, the works often seem bathed in moonlight, or else an eerie non-specific light source that gives no hint to location or time. This evocation of an unfamiliar place is enhanced by Lloyd’s monochromatic schema, the greens and grey-browns lending the scenes a particular cast that both defines and isolates them, a world perhaps not only without end but also without easy entry, cool, sparse and unknown.
© Jena Woodburn |
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