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current exhibition 2007
Locus Amoenus (nice place)
4th october - 10th november
at artworksMK.
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Artist Sally Annett has created a body of works, commemorating the landscape of Milton Keynes in the year of its fortieth birthday. They capture the city in a way that focuses on its natural beauty. The paintings, films and prints portray not the newness of the town, but the dichotomy of old, original landscape transposed with new planting, modern architecture and highways. The work comprises an exhibition of twelve large ’Äòsalon style’Äô paintings, one representing each month of the year. Each painting will measure 2 x 1.5 metres approx. These major paintings are accompanied by breath taking stills and animations.
This is an unexpected and serene Milton Keynes, its herbaceous successes paralleling the economic successes, which show case the ’ÄòNew Town’Äô as the model of what, a new town can be. Those who designed and built Milton Keynes have had their vision vindicated.
"Milton Keynes, as a modern town has been documented in the modern way, photographically and cinematically, it has not appealed to ’Äòtraditional’Äô landscape painters, as it has not been deemed beautiful enough, Annett shows us that it now is. Her work is partly based on aesthetics, but substantially on history and politics. She wanted to document the city in its youth, aware that older cities like Oxford and London have a plethora of prints and paintings, which map their views and vistas in time, before the inevitable spread of urbanisation and commerce. Annett is in the business of generating a cultural history for Milton Keynes, these images will not fade or be lost to new methods of formatting, they will last, as evidence of what the town was like when it was ’Äònew’Äô until it is ’Äòold’Äô. Landscape in Art has always had a social or political meaning inherent to it or placed upon it. It indicates ownership, antiquitation, sentimentality, false or selected reality and fantasy.
...This is a reaction partially of contemporary aesthetic choice but also of politics. The once grand meta-narrative of the Arts, painting, and indeed many ’Äòtraditional’Äô art forms, have been usurped by Cinematography; Film and Television. Those of us who have kept painting through the nineties and noughties have been the truly obsessed; totally besotted with the medium and illusion of painting. This has not been a fashionable choice, and there is sometimes an unfair assumption that there is a conflict between modern/conceptual media and more traditional techniques and manifestos. This is not the case. All forms of making art are equally valid, deep down, this is the truth...Art has thrown off a millennium of uniformity, and gone beyond itself physically and intellectually, but it still performs the same function [communication/narration] and still serves the same masters..."
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Atavist Tarot
The Atavist Tarot written in collaboration with Rowena Willard-Wright is published by Foulsham, distributed by MacMillan and available at all good book stores and on line.
’Ä¢ ISBN-10: 0572025823
’Ä¢ ISBN-13: 978-0572025823
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