Tony Plant: Art Focus | Floor 1
Tony Plant’s childhood footprint is set deep into the cliffs and coves of his native Cornwall. Later, at Chelsea Art school, Plant was fortunate to have outstanding tutors - Roger Ackling, Trevor Sutton and Helen Chadwick who's post modernist art celebrated the transience of life: with her famous ‘Piss Flowers 1991-2’ she made casts of her own piss drawings in the snow. Chadwick’s snow and Plant’s sand - using nature as their muse and canvas, just as the aboriginal rock artists did 35,000 years ago.
Now, away from modern art education and into the world - we see one man and a rake, a romantic landsman, transferring journeys and movements, across canvass and into the sand with the mindfulness of a Zen monk attending to his gravel garden, or the Medieval farmer hand ploughing a field of perfectly aligned furrows.
Tony Plant dances around the tide, playing a game with nature’s light and nature’s scale, filming the transformation with his drone at different times of night and day - we are reminded that Monet did something close with his series of thirty ‘Haystacks 1890-91.’ The beauty of Plant’s whole beach drawings is that they never overwhelm the landscape, instead they nestle into the margins between rock, sand and sea - ornamental tracery on a monumental scale gifting the viewer an unexpected poetic experience.
CIRCLE is showing Tony plants delightfully quirky assemblages. Plant captures the sense of place and sometimes bringing back reclaimed items found on the way. His work is a wonderful celebration of the ever-changing coastal environment and a reminder that impermanence can be treasured.
