Peter James Smith Exhibitions

Peter James Smith

Fading Light

21 Jun - 10 Jul 2003

Exhibition Works

View from an Upstairs Window (2001)
View from an Upstairs Window (2001)
D'Urvilles Passage (2003)
D'Urvilles Passage (2003)
For the Call of the Running Tide (2003)
For the Call of the Running Tide (2003)
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles (2003)
Fading Light
Fading Light (2002)
A Meteorite Lands (2003)
A Meteorite Lands (2003)
Traces of History
Traces of History (2002)
Following The Clinton River
Following The Clinton River (2003)
Spirits Bay
Spirits Bay (2003)

Exhibition Text

Fading Light - The new work still refers to cinema and photography for a sense of romanticism, drama and narrative. The painted images are typeset with applied texts - often in the form of notes, jottings and historical records.
The painted images are set into a darkened ground, like movies being viewed in a darkened room. The darkening borders refer to abstract composition and the margins of texts where editors leave their mark and footnotes reside. There are sometimes still scribbled signature by-products and traceries in the margins, just as before in previous work. Perhaps they are less frenzied.

The sense of history is all pervasive and clearly evident in different genres of still life and landscape. Referenced are histories of literature, architecture, and the scientific age of the enlightenment. The title of the show refers to this, to the passage of history and to the changed understandings that contemporary culture shares with science. There is awe at the power of science rather than a critique of this power.

As we move through the other side of postmodernism, the works promote a fuller, richer, more romantic, more wholesome view of what is important in the world. The list of importants is a post 9/11 one. This is not the 90's art of the everyday, but rather, art of the special - that which makes us pause and watch the sun setting beyond the horizon at sea as we run along the beach - the valued experience captured on film. Our shared experience of landscape is an emotional one - one that has indeed historically set the expatriate to yearning.