Ultima Thule - exhibition at Tullie House

[Stephen Vaughan]

Dear All
I just wanted to let you know that an exhibition of my work made in the Icelandic landscape opens today at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle http://www.tulliehouse.co.uk/stephen-va ... tima-thule

The exhibition runs until 6th February 2011. The show is also previewed in today's Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/ ... oy-gregory

If you are in the area (or passing through) I hope you'll get a chance to see it.

Thanks and best wishes,
Stephen

[Dave Tolcher]

Stephen, congratulations - looks like a great body of work and wish I could see the hung exhibition but sadly Carlisle is a bit out of the way for me.

Best regards

Dave

[Julian Boulter]

All the best Stephen.

Its a magnificent work and I hope many get to see it.

Alas not me this time but I viewed some of the prints at The Photographers Gallery in London recently....stunning!

Julian

[Stephen Vaughan]

Thanks Julian – that's very kind! I'm glad you like the work.
All best,
Stephen

[Marc Wilson]

Good luck with the show Stephen.
Great work.

Marc

[Marizu]

This looks really interesting, Stephen.
Great concept backed by arresting images.
I read that it is a traveling exhibition. I hoe it travels to the North West.

[Adrian Brewster]

Hi Stephen,
Loved the exhibition. Tremendous prints that hang together well as a narrative. A voyage to the edge of the world, the romantic sublime, Nasa alien worlds but brought forcefully back to earth with an ecological vision. 10x8 "forensic observation" of the grinding edge of geology, ice and water. The skies are a massive soft box of light and what at first seems beyond our known world opens out into a feeling for the volcanic, ice carved rock beneath this thin skin of green earth. That centre piece chunk of ice with its internal blue light and scalloped edges is the key that unlocks the rock designs in this wilderness. Land, sea, air and light become one process.
Also quite topical as Mark Stone/Kennedy, the undercover cop, infiltrated and presumably helped sabotage the Saving Iceland group http://www.savingiceland.org/ campaigning to save this last wilderness. It just shows how important landscape photography can be in showing that what is often dismissed as wasteland by the industrialists is so preciously beautiful.
Regards
Adrian

[Stephen Vaughan]

Hi Stephen,
Loved the exhibition. Tremendous prints that hang together well as a narrative. A voyage to the edge of the world, the romantic sublime, Nasa alien worlds but brought forcefully back to earth with an ecological vision. 10x8 "forensic observation" of the grinding edge of geology, ice and water. The skies are a massive soft box of light and what at first seems beyond our known world opens out into a feeling for the volcanic, ice carved rock beneath this thin skin of green earth. That centre piece chunk of ice with its internal blue light and scalloped edges is the key that unlocks the rock designs in this wilderness. Land, sea, air and light become one process.
Also quite topical as Mark Stone/Kennedy, the undercover cop, infiltrated and presumably helped sabotage the Saving Iceland group http://www.savingiceland.org/ campaigning to save this last wilderness. It just shows how important landscape photography can be in showing that what is often dismissed as wasteland by the industrialists is so preciously beautiful.
Regards
Adrian

Hi Adrian
I'm delighted that you were able to make it to see the exhibition – and thank you for your generous response to the work.

The potential industrial developments in Iceland are, as you suggest, a threat to a unique landscape. In the process of making the work, I was acutely aware that the idea of wilderness was not something that we can believe in at the beginning of the 21st Century. Every inch of the land is walked on before, mapped, owned, utilised in one way or another. So, for me, the decision to exclude any trace of human influence on the landscape was to deliberately create a fiction of an impossible landscape – one that is primordial, or otherworldly. Emergent beginning or apocalypse.

The subtext to these imaginings – the reality of a contemporary world where natural resources are harnessed and exploited for economic growth/survival – is inherent in any contemporary study of the land and I'm glad that you recognised this in the exhibition. Although I don't see the central purpose of my work to be ecological protest or activism, I'm glad that it can be provocative in that context.

Thanks again Adrian. All best wishes,
Stephen

PS - The exhibition at Tullie House Museum in Carlisle until Feb 6th. A smaller selection of the work will be shown in London in the Spring, but the Carlisle exhibition is the most extensive and complete.