North East Statues

Status: Temporary Exhibit (Friday 29th September – Saturday 7th October)

Ben Long isn’t a stranger to MAW, having previously exhibited his sculpture, (constructed from spirit levels) Level Structure (SL279C127) in 2021. This year he returns to Teesside with Moving Landscape – Medmenham Abbey, Buckinghamshire (after Henry H. Parker), a motion-blurred artwork derived from a 19th-century oil painting by Parker it fits perfectly with the Art Week’s theme of MEASURE.

Displayed on a billboard on Stockton Road, the piece evokes the landscape of a view from a passing train window. To achieve this Ben digitally manipulated the oil painting in Photoshop.

Held by MIMA, the late 19th century landscape painting depicts a romantic “rural idyll” of the English Countryside. However, a tranquil view across the River Thames (on what you can presume is a warm summer’s day) is transformed in Ben’s interpretation.

Ben tells us a ‘A high-resolution digital image of the painting was supplied to me by the curators at MIMA, and I manipulated it in Photoshop so that the vista appears as if it’s being travelled through at high speed.’

An ongoing series, Moving Landscapes is exhibited on billboards and the site of this particular landscape on Stockton Road adds, ‘to the dynamism of this altered image.’ The scenery, cows and greenery, are passed at such a speed that they become a bright vibrant blur. This was an aesthetic choice for Ben as, ‘many landscape oil paintings are made up of dark earthy tones and hues so when they are motion blurred the resulting image lacks contrasts and the result is too muddy.’

He created an initial test work were the piece worked, a process he has used throughout the Moving Landscapes. The artworks take a month to produce as the image needs to be ‘divided up into receding layers to create depth and the illusion of perspective.’

When asked about how the series Moving Landscapes explores themes surrounding the environment, landscapes and site specificity, he elaborated:

‘In the 21st century, we typically experience the rural while in transit, travelling through the countryside at high speed from one town to another, the natural world sliding past us in a blur. So as much as ‘Moving Landscapes’ are abstractions of 19th-century oil paintings, they are also figurative depictions particular to this aspect of contemporary travel. This may prompt the viewer to consider the artwork as a metaphor for the liberal freedoms of travel and its necessary infrastructure, or seen in opposition to this as depicting the degradation of the natural realm.’

A measure of the present moment in relation to the past, Moving Landscapes re-examines the tranquillity, harmony, and contented country life of oil paintings of the Romantic Period in relation to a modern romance with the rapid pace of contemporary life.

‘I think we would all agree that most aspects of contemporary life are accelerating at an unprecedented rate’ says Ben. ‘My hope is that when seen these works prompt the question of whether access to more things at a faster speed actually facilitates a better experience and understanding of the world, or ultimately leads to greater confusion, over-stimulation, and desensitisation.’

Inspired by American Minimalism and re-using the fabric of art history to make new art, Ben’s practice rejects elitism and cultural snobbery and is influenced by his working-class roots. He states ‘Art creates some kind of order in a chaotic and complicated world, but ultimately entropy gets the better of everything, particularly if the art is being shown in the public realm.’

Recalling his first work a public art piece entitled, The Great Travelling Art Exhibition’ , where a series of drawings he had created by drawing into the layer of emission dirt built up on the rear shutters of haulage trucks travelled around the UK. He comments, ‘ I got an audience of millions of people, the trade-off being that the “exhibition” only existed for a short period of time. “Here for a good time, not for a long time”, as they say!’

Notably, it was during this work a conversation began with a lorry driver who was a fan of 19th Century Romanticism art, particularly landscapes and ‘would get all animated about the paintings of Constable held in the National Gallery in London‘. It was whilst sitting with the driver travelling through rural England the idea for Moving Landscapes came about. The driver would gesture out the window ‘Wow Ben! Just look at that view!’ and suggest ‘Why don’t you paint something like that?”. It was these comments that Ben realised ‘in that moment it made sense to me that if I were to depict a landscape it would also need to incorporate the velocity at which we were travelling. The speed made it all the more beautiful to me, but crucially it was a way to consider landscape painting as relevant to a contemporary experience of that subject.’

Live now, pop down and encounter Moving Landscape – Medmenham Abbey, Buckinghamshire (after Henry H. Parker).