HIGH & LOW' / 'UCHEL AC ISEL'
WATCH THE FILM HERE
'HIGH AND LOW' FEATURES IN AESTHETICA MAGAZINE'S PUBLICATION 'FUTURE NOW 2017'
'HIGH AND LOW ' FEATURED ON BBC COUNTRYFILE IN 2016 AND 2018.
'HIGH AND LOW' WINS ARTS AND BUSINESS CYMRU AWARD 2017
High and Low, or ‘Uchel ac Isel’, is a spectacular outdoor painting installation. The installation tells a unique and compelling story about the history, geography and industrial heritage of North Wales, encouraging visitors to make a deeper connection with the region’s dramatic landscape and the forces that have shaped it.
High and Low features two giant paintings, created in two very different dramatic and inspiring sites: one floating high on the flanks of Snowdon on Llyn Llydaw, and one hung low, deep beneath the mountains in an abandoned slate cavern.
Each of the two location offers a unique and arresting opportunity for highly visual storytelling and contemplation: from the soaring light and reflected imagery of the mountain lake to the dark atmospheric shadows and acoustics of the abandoned slate cavern.
Both of these sites have great historical and geographical significance. Because the paintings were created in situ and then seen in context, they will offer a very different way for the viewer to engage with both the art and the landscape which inspired it.
PROJECT SPONSORED AND ENABLED BY MENAI HOLIDAY COTTAGES AND THACKERAY GALLERY
WWW.MENAIHOLIDAYCOTTAGES.CO.UK
PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM BY RICHARD BROOMHALL - FRACTUREDETHER.COM
PROJECT BUILD AND DESIGN - MARK AND LOZ SHIPWRIGHTS
ANTHONY GARRATT'S PAINTINGS ARE REPRESENTED BY:
RICARDO VAN PARMAR GALLERY - WWW.RVP.GALLERY
ANTHONY IS A TUTOR AT THE NEWLYN SCHOOL OF ART, CORNWALL
BIOGRAPHY:
Anthony Garratt was born in 1979, He lives in South Devon with his young family, and currently works from his studio on the Dartington Estate. He studied at Chelsea College of Art for a Foundation (Dip), and a BA (hons) at Falmouth College of Art.
He has exhibited extensively in public and commercial galleries, including 18 solo shows to date. His paintings are held in private and corporate collections internationally.
His eclectic, self-initiated public installations have garnered much National press interest. In 2016, ‘High and Low’ which was commissioned in Snowdonia to communicate the area’s mining heritage, won the ‘Arts and Business Award’ in Wales and featured on National television. ‘To All At Sea’ from 2019 featured in both The Guardian and The Spectator as a ‘Top Ten Outdoor Artwork 2019’. His recent public participation artworks have encouraged hundreds of people to engage with the practice of painting, whilst raising thousands for associated charitable causes.
In 2019, following an artist residency with a photographer in South Africa, he established a collaborative project called, ‘Cawston Garratt’, which launched in London and combines, and interrupts, the processes of painting and photography.
Since 2014, he has been a tutor and mentor at The Newlyn School of Art, both on short courses and year-long professional practice programmes. He is a member of the Wilderness Art Collective and runs school workshops to encourage a creative relationship with environmental issues and emotional responses to the landscape.
STATEMENT:
My artistic practice is diverse, but rooted in a passion for our relationship with the concept of ‘landscape’.
My most recent paintings are energetic, plastic and deliberately over-saturated fictions. They have, in part, evolved out of memories from recent travels but are mostly invented spaces that often include empty, modernist structures, sitting within energetic mark making.
Alongside these lively and colourful fictions sit paintings that are quieter, more meditative and organic in their approach. This contrast in style echoes a fascination with the idea of ‘contrast in landscape’ and the global polarity of our experiences in the landscape.
In an essay about my work from 2020, Kate Reeves-Edwards writes, ‘Indeed, the moody expanses, the dramatic chiaroscuro, and the saturated colour palette promote a dualism between the ominous and the exciting. His work quickens the heart rate and fills the viewer with a desire to get out there. Garratt changes his method and materials depending on the subject matter he is portraying.’
Much of my studio time is spent excited by the action of painting; finding marks and devices which are practiced and evolved before committing them to a more resolved solution. It is this experimentation that stimulates change in the work. You can view selected, recent paintings on my website at www.agarratt.com
My ‘other art hat’ is to conceive and produce large scale, self-initiated public artworks. The public installations are led by a particular subject and evolve out of a passion for collaboration and taking messages to an audience who can ‘encounter’ artwork outdoors. These projects not only inspire and alter my studio practice but also enable the opportunity to work across sectors I wouldn’t usually encounter or collaborate with.
I am currently working on a concept for a ‘floating’ exhibition of large, double sided paintings which switch sides on each tide, along the River Dart, and anticipate that this will launch in 2023. I am also continuing to place ‘Wild Words’, a project that scorches poems and quotes about natural recovery into grass, which subsequently grows and disappears in the following weeks.
You can read more about my installation projects on their associated websites: