With a career spanning more than five decades, Ian McKeever is one
of Britain’s most senior artists working on the international
stage. This publication documents the Henge paintings – a series
started in 2017 and completed over the course of five years,
inspired by prehistoric standing stones in the county of Wiltshire,
England, and continuing the artist’s long-standing investigation
into the languages and possibilities of abstract painting.
Comprising thirty paintings along with numerous works on paper, the
genesis of the series was a visit by McKeever to the world-famous
neolithic site in the village of Avebury in 2016, where he took
black and white photographs of the large stones that form three
discrete circles: two smaller ones contained within the largest.
Erected some 4500 years ago, Avebury is the largest stone circle in
Britain, and forms part of what English Heritage asserts to be ‘a
set of neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial sites that seemingly
formed a vast sacred landscape.’ Art historian and curator Paul
Moorhouse, in his essay commissioned for the publication, describes
how McKeever ‘framed each megalith in close-up, their edges
visible at the extremity of the resulting images,’ explaining how
‘the experience of moving around Avebury and responding to the
huge stones’ monumental presence made an abiding impression that
resonated with deep-seated preoccupations.’ McKeever’s
resulting body of work is an earnest and considered exploration
into how paint can convey universal forces and properties such as
mass, gravity and time, and how colour, texture and abstraction can
converse with three-dimensional space, form and materiality. The
relationship between painting and sculpture in McKeever’s work is
discussed by means of an in-conversation between the artist and Dr
Jon Wood. ‘My interest in alluding to early megalithic sites in
titling the group of paintings Henge paintings,’ says McKeever,
‘was in touching that deeper sense of time, time’s weight, so
to speak. How to imbue a painting with its own weight of time,
forsake the immediacy of the here and now.’ Designed and produced
by Tim Harvey, the publication has been printed by Narayana Press
in Odder, Denmark. It is published by Anomie, London, with support
from Galleri Susanne Ottesen, Copenhagen, and Heather Gaudio Fine
Art, New Canaan, Connecticut. The publication accompanies
exhibitions of selected works from the Henge paintings at both
galleries in 2022. Ian McKeever was born 1946, Withernsea,
Yorkshire, UK. He lives and works in Hartgrove, Dorset. McKeever
has received numerous awards including the prestigious DAAD
scholarship in Berlin 1989/90 and was elected a Royal Academician
in 2003. He has held several teaching positions including Guest
Professor at the Städel Akademie der Kunst in Frankfurt, Senior
Lecturer, Slade, University of London and Visiting Professor at the
University of Brighton. He has also published many texts on
painting. Recent public solo exhibitions include Ian McKeever /
Tony Cragg – Painting and Sculpture, Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden,
Wuppertal, Germany (2020); Paintings 1992–2018, Ferens Art
Gallery, Hull, UK (2018); Hours of Darkness, Hours of Light,
Kunstmuseet i Tønder, Denmark (2015); Between Darkness and Light,
National Gallery of the Faroe Islands, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands
(2015); Hours of Darkness, Hours of Light, Kunst-Station Sankt
Peter Köln, Cologne, Germany (2014); and Hartgrove. Malerei und
Fotografie, Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany (2012).
McKeever’s work is represented in leading international public
collections, including Tate, British Museum, Royal Academy of Arts,
London; Museum Moderner Kunst (mumok), Vienna; Museum of Fine Arts,
Budapest; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Glyptotek,
Copenhagen; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Brooklyn Museum
of Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Boston
Museum of Fine Art and Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut.
General
Imprint: |
Anomie Publishing
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
July 2022 |
Authors: |
Ian McKeever
• Paul Moorhouse
• Jon Wood
|
Dimensions: |
285 x 244 x 14mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
96 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-910221-41-9 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
1-910221-41-4 |
Barcode: |
9781910221419 |
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