The Days Run Away | Ian Friend
19 January - 6 February, 2022
Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present The Days Run Away by Ian Friend on show at the gallery between 19 January - 6 February 2022. The survey exhibition features works from his earlier practice, as well as very recent creations including a series of sculptures, the first made by Ian in decades. Rather than provide a clear narrative for its audience, The Days Run Away invites the viewer to take pleasure in the abstract and poetic nature of its works.
Catalogue essay writer Zali Matthews states:
The songs, poems and stories informing Friend’s works emerge as abstract, rounded forms, sometimes large and elongated, fine and peppery, or translucent and amorphous. They are repeated endlessly, compulsively: in white clumps, like snow; or in groups of fine dots, like small perforations in paper, clustered galaxies or sheets of falling rain. Looking at Friend’s works, the viewer is given the impression of looking both in and out, at atoms and at galaxies. Friend blurs the boundaries between micro- and macrocosms, removing human scale.
Photograph of Ian Friend taken by Embie Tan Aren.
From the Studio
In anticipation of Ian Friend’s first solo exhibition The Days Run Away, the JMG team recently visited Ian’s studio to learn more about his artistic practice.
In this interview, Ian joins Gallery Assistant Zali Matthews in conversation about his practice and the parcels of history, music and poetry that have inspired it…
