Towards Silence by Carl Warner
... out of time | Carl Warner
… out of time | Carl Warner
29 June - 17 July, 2022
Squares.
Squares within rectangles. Squares side by side, above and below, forming rectangles. Squares removed from rectangles, from their centres, from their edges, making new shapes, creating distinct patterns. Squares are all that is left from those
Times.
These times. Time seen. Time measured. Time divided. Time for, time against. Time, apparently.
Times one.
A thing multiplied by itself is squared.
Times two.
When is the time of a thing? When, is the time of a thing.
Times three
Once upon a …
Taking …
…out of time.
Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present … out of time by Carl Warner on show between 29 June to 17 July, 2022. Alongside new works, the exhibition presents a selection of Warner’s archival prints in four genres: Concrete Pasture, Nature, Wood, and Metal. The gallery invites visitors to leaf through Warner’s unseen working photographs spanning back to his first exhibition from 1988. Each of the prints is a vintage, unique, one-off edition.
Between Two Views | Carl Warner
Between Two Views | Carl Warner
22 January - 7 February 2021
Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present Carl Warner's latest exhibition Between Two Views, showing from 22 January - 7 February 2021. Please RVSP below to attend the exhibition's opening, Sunday 24th January from 4 - 6 pm. We welcome you to visit the gallery, Wednesday to Saturday 10am - 5pm & 11- 4pm Sunday.
A mirror allows us to see the impossible. The simplest expression of this impossibility is perhaps that with a mirror we can see ourselves and what is behind us, beyond our direct looking, all at once. In eighteenth century Britain, a particular type of compact mirror, the Claude glass, was used by artists and tourists to view and imaginatively shape the landscape into Picturesque talking points. It was such a popular activity that guidebooks advised of sites where the best views of outstanding landscapes were to be seen with the aid of the glass. The way of seeing and shaping landscape enabled by the Claude glass has numerous contemporary parallels. The mobile phone in size, shape and particular functions is the most obvious. Physically so similar, with the darkened face and fit in the hand, often protected by a protective case, today’s mobile technology does all that the original users of the glass desired. Aesthetic images made and shared in an instant through a transparent technology.
To make these works I walked one hundred miles through the Scottish Highlands and also went to the northern most point of the British Isles to the island of Unst. I was a tourist searching for views, as the earlier users of the glass, who made a familiar landscape strange in the views from their Claudes, were. Near the peak of Conic Hill overlooking Loch Lomond, I watched as people turned their back to the view to make pictures of it, unwittingly re-enacting the actions of those earlier tourists in hunt of the picturesque. The works in this series reference that pivot between two views, recto verso images that make the reduction of the real into two dimensions both obvious and problematic. The ellipse references the Claude glass in its most popular shape, a frame within a frame. They highlight a preference of one view over another, aesthetic decisions that obliterate and negate, but also raise the question: Are those views in the ellipse to the front or behind?
— Carl Warner
Dark Mirror | Carl Warner
Dark Mirror | Carl Warner
2 - 26 May, 2018
In the Eighteenth century it was the height of fashion for tourists to venture out into a landscape turn their back to the scene and view it in a dark pocket mirror known as a Claude glass.
Nature was better understood as a picture, a thing to be defined, shaped and limited by technology. The convex mirror brought a whole vista into view, the darkened tint reduced the light to the tones of paint and moving the mirror shaped the landscape allowing the particular arrangement of formations that made a picture to the liking of the observer.
The diversion was so popular that guidebooks gave stations, places from which the best view could be obtained, including one in the middle of a lake. The painter John Glover brought his Claude glass with him when he moved to Van Diemen's Land to assist in seeing and transcribing the Australian scene.
What was an Arcadian filter when used in Britain was a European filter in Australia, a look back to a time before. Use of the Claude glass fell away and it is little known now, but we still turn to and from nature using tools to alter it to our liking. A smart phone is almost the same size as a Claude glass and the darkened screen can act as a similar mirror and our touristic impulses to see a scene ‘at its best’ are unchanged.
I went on my own tour to the ruins of Port Arthur and the splendor of the Pieman river in Tasmania with thoughts of the glass and an interest in how we, as a species, attempt to set ourselves outside of the natural. We constantly turn to and away from nature confusing the real with the ideal, thinking of how it should be rather than as it is.
Still/Silent | Carl Warner
Still/Silent | Carl Warner
22 March - 29 April, 2017
Darkness Visible | Carl Warner
Darkness Visible | Carl Warner
25 February - 21 March, 2015
There is an apocryphal story of the painter J.M.W. Turner having himself lashed to a mast during a storm and deciding that if he survived the experience he was bound to record it. I say apocryphal for it appears that Turner was as good a showman as he was a painter. It is a story that sticks, an unctuous and oily legacy despite Turner’s light hand with paint, to any attempting to work with landscape, even photographers. There is a demand that nature must be experienced so that it can be translated, it must be seen as wild, irrepressible and above all sublime.
Carl Warner: I will support you for ever and ever
I will support you for ever and ever by Carl Warner continues his ongoing engagement with the visual resonance of 20th Century Modernism into the 21st Century. This exhibition is offered as an online exhibition. Works can be viewed online and purchase enquires made via info@janamntonart.com or phone +61 7 3831 3060. Prints are also available to view at the gallery.
