Iris: Earth Day Readings at Large Glass Gallery London 2022
An evening of readings on Earth Day, Friday 22 April 2022 with Adam Moore, Abby Nocon, Sophie Seita, and Florence Uniacke.
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by Earthday.org including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. The official theme for 2022: “Invest in Our Planet™.”
Earth Day Readings, commissioned and presented at Large Glass Gallery London during Iris, 11 Mar–30 Apr 2022, curated by Edward C Ball:
A multivalent word, Iris lends itself to associations with sight and perception (the eye, iridescence), with the natural world, with the fluidity of language and with mythology.
In astronomy, the Iris nebula is a cloud of interstellar dust particles, reflecting the light of nearby stars; in mythology, Iris is messenger (eiris) for the Gods, riding down to Earth on a rainbow (iris); in botany, the Iris genus spans a spectrum of colours and blooms at this time; in anatomy, the iris is the coloured part of the eye that controls how much light enters in.
Each of the assembled artworks allows light to flow through their surfaces, processes and materials, affording glimpses beneath the picture plane into a multitude of significations. Spanning painting, printing, video, weaving, pleating and watercolour, there is a shared delight in process, whether by hand, by brush, digitally or mechanically. Perceptual tricks recur as images are pushed and stretched to their very edge, gesturing to a field of meaning and matter beyond our measure – at once cosmic and crystalline.
Visit Large Glass Gallery to learn more about the exhibition with works by Caline Aoun, Anna Barham, Alice Channer, Melissa Gordon, Adia Wahid, and Andrea Zittel.
Commissioned by Large Glass Gallery to help promote awareness for the health of our planet for Iris, Earth Day Readings. Having recently returned from a visit to one of the exhibiting artists, Andrea Zittel, in her home in Joshua Tree, California, Adam was inspired by Zittel’s artwork, Warp and Weft Study (rust, white and black), to explore both the artwork and the process and notion of rusting facing ecological crisis and breakdown.
Rust
Nine shapes share 12 edges. Wedged deep in an irregular, black octohedron (perhaps two fifths their combined total mass, to the wondering eye), each is in shelter, not in shade. Shielded and held in an opening of sorts. An insertion. Temperate and formal, intuition distinguishes the matter: there’s warmth, I think. A hair’s breadth, a knife edge, a fine line of fine lines, a circumspect balancing of biases, sure. But there is an edge to the whole, retaining… constraining, even – the way shapes sit and stack. Presume three walls, not four; two lie beside and one before. That, is obscured. Three clearly see above the parapet. Hues degarde down, and right, from flint to slate to bark. Buried in black, from right, and upward, aggrading dried blood drops to fainter shades, then bark? A jolt, a breath, a rest, off white left of centre. There is an edge to the volume.
