Darren Almond: To Leave A Light Impression

‘To Leave a Light Impression’ can refer to the photographic process and to our relationship with nature, which is explored in Almond’s works. The artist plays on the relationship between time and space, using photography as a tool to reveal it. The landscape becomes the tool through which these ideas are expressed: time/space, the human/natural and the seen/unseen become central themes.

Almond’s ‘Present Form’ images and bronze sculptural objects suggest humanity’s enduring fascination with the moon. The ‘Present Form’ photographs capture portraits of the oldest known stone circle on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Dating from 3,000 BC, the stones are thought to have been used as an astronomical observatory to measure 18.6-year moon cycles. Alongside the photographs are six pairs of cylindrical hand-polished bronze sculptures placed on the gallery floor. Each pair signifies the astronauts who have walked on the moon. The sculptures are filled with lead and have the astronauts’ initials engraved on their surface. The objects weigh the same as the astronauts they represent, literally carrying the weight of a historical event.

The moon is a place beyond experience for most of us: we can see it in the night sky but are unable to visit its landscape. The moon holds our interest from its faraway space, but is still just within our scale and context. The two works explore the binaries of the visible and invisible. The standing stones are an emblem of man’s historical fascination with the moon, whilst the polished bronze sculptures present the unseen, the quantifiable notion of weight and the unimaginable experience of leaving a footprint on the moon’s surface.

The ‘Full Moon’ photographs were taken at night, the landscape lit only by the light of the full moon. The lengthy exposure reveals the landscape in what seems like daylight, a quirk of the photographic process. The result gives the landscape an unnatural, almost sublime appearance. We are witness to an untruthful record: the landscape is allowed to reveal itself in the dark of night as the image becomes a record of time and space. The images play on what is seen and unseen, revealing a landscape undetectable by the human eye, a play on time, space and perception.
,br> At times, the aesthetic quality of the images hides their complexity, but if you look past the surface, the works reveal themselves. Almond’s images can seem safe and not too challenging: once the trick becomes apparent in the ‘Full Moon’ series, can we get past this surface reading? But Almond’s works harbour a deeper connection to the particular landscapes photographed, exploring an interest in geology, myth and history. The remote vistas follow in the footsteps of the HMS Beagle voyage, which became the basis for Charles Darwin’s famous ‘On the Origin of the Species’ (1859).

This extra layer of interest moves past the surface reading, taking the images into a historical realm; exploring the human history of discovery, unravelling our relationship and understanding of nature.

Almond’s images are visually beautiful, but hold deeper meanings beneath their surface appearance. Much like the exhibition title, the work is embedded with multiple layers of meaning. In ‘Laurentia’, a quote from nature writer Nan Shepherd is displayed on gold train-plates. The plates appear like signposts directing us into the landscape, but the words are not quite factual but poetic, navigating our response to the landscapes depicted. The words in ‘Laurentia’ direct us into the exhibition, not from a scientific position but from a human worldview, one of experience and emotion, a position from which we can explore our relationship to time, history and the natural landscape.