Sax Impey 'Voyage

S A X I M P E Y V O Y A G E

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To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell,

To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,

Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,

And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been;

To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,

With the wild flock that never needs a fold;

Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean;

This is not solitude, ‘tis but to hold

Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,

To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,

And roam alone, the world’s tired denizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;

Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!

None that, with kindred consciousness endued,

If we were not, would seem to smile the less

Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;

This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

‘Solitude’, Lord Byron, 1788 - 1824

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Voyage is a collection of paintings made by Impey since returning last year from a journey by sea from Eastern Australia to Singapore. This physical voyage took him from the Coral Sea through the Torres Strait into the Gulf of Carpentaria, stopping briefly in Darwin. From there, he sailed on across the Arafura Sea into the Timor Sea, sailing on to Bali, then into the Sunda Strait, then northwards past Java to his final destination - a passage through treacherous seas still occupied by pirates, and historically frequented by pioneers on routes of trade and in search of new lands to colonise.

The existential pull of such elements is clear, as Impey states: “21st Century mass communication, the relentless, total, banal, vapid tedium of the seeming need to communicate, or be communicated to, all the time, disappears out there on the ocean. A mind can breathe, and observe, and reflect, away from the shrill desperation of a culture that, having forgotten that it is better to say nothing than something about nothing, invents ever-new ways to fill every single space with less and less. So a certain empathy with earlier travellers ensues: the sea is still the sea, as it ever was, direct and uncomplicated, and the stars are not a great deal older. The specific aroma of an incipient landfall is a shared experience with those who have gone before, as is the bending of a sail to the wind, as is the chart... The sea renews the land, and the possibilities for life, for my life, are renewed, enlarged by the landfall after the sea. The land is better for being arrived at, and I am better for arriving.”

The paintings in this exhibition follow a variety of themes from contemplative paintings of specific areas of ocean to vast celestial expanses undisturbed in the night sky. This continues with the ‘Constellation’ series, works which could be meditative studies of the stars, or the glint of the sun on the ocean, fleeting images that are at the same time perennial, remaining long after the boat has left those waters.

There is also a series of works that incorporate charts and extracts from notebooks. As Impey states: “The chart is a compendium of knowledge, of successive generations of endeavour and experience. I use charts in some of the new work as an acknowledgement of that, and an appreciation of the aesthetic, but most significantly as a personal aide memoir, which combine with logbook notes, painting and photography to provide a specific recollection of time and place.”

The monumental ‘Sumba’ refers to the witnessing of plumes of black smoke rising from the islands coastline, darkening a luminous sky – whether an aboriginal burning of the land, a ritualistic ceremony or a tragic forest fire remains unknown but leaving an indelible impression.

Although Impey has used photography as source material in the past, many of these new works contain an interesting evolution, incorporating the development of a photographic image within the painting process. Self evident in some works, and entirely obscured in others, the possibilities inherent in the combination have clearly invigorated the artist: “the photograph is not an accurate description of a moment, neither is a painting, nor a memory. But to coalesce these elements within an object, perhaps... it’s a lie to tell a truth.”

Slightly separate yet clearly related are a series of beautiful yet eerie paintings of Orford Ness, a feral and remote island just off the Suffolk coast. In the past the area was used as the site of a secret Cold War military testing ground, and now stands as a phantom that seems all the more to illustrate the impotence of our temporary concerns.

It would be simplistic, albeit understandable, to view these paintings as a record of this odyssey, but for me these are not paintings of the sea, the land or the stars, they are a reflection of man’s insignificance when faced with the awesome and sublime might of nature and the cosmos. They are a personal ‘rite of passage’ that stand, already, as a ghost of what has been witnessed, been and gone but exist as a monumental human response to the fleetingness of man’s existence.

The voyage is life through to its brief and inevitable but defiant end. To face it, and to live it is to be liberated. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote “I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now”.

I am sure that such a journey does much to open your eyes, making you very aware of your place within the cosmic order.

Joseph Clarke

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Constellation 4

oil, mixed media and silverprint on panel

150 x 150 cm

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Constellation 2


100 x 100 cm

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Constellation


100 x 100 cm

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Constellation 3


96 x 61 cm

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Constellation 5


61 x 122 cm

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Sumba Sea


122 x 122 cm

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Voice of Wave and Sea


61 x 96 cm

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Consider the sea’s listless chime:Time’s self it is, made audible,The murmur of the earth’s own shell.

Secret continuance sublimeIs the sea’s end: our sight may passNo furlong further. Since time wasThis sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death’s, it hathThe mournfulness of ancient life,Enduring always at dull strife.As the world’s heart of rest and wrath,Its painful pulse is in the sands.Lost utterly, the whole sky stands,Grey and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,Listen alone among the woods;Those voices of twin solitudesShall have one sound alike to thee:Hark where the murmurs of thronged menSurge and sink back and surge again, Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beachAnd listen at its lips: they sighThe same desire and mystery,The echo of the whole sea’s speech.And all mankind is thus at heartNot anything but what thou art:And Earth, Seas, Man, are all in each.

‘The Sea-Limits’, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828 - 1882

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Dark Sea Circle

oil and mixed media on panel

150 x 150 cm

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Moon Sea


100 x 100 cm

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Chart (South China Sea)

oil and mixed media on hydrographic chart on panel

104 x 72 cm

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Chart (Torres Straits)

graphite on hydrographic chart on panel

72 x 110 cm

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Passing Pulau Bawean

oil, mix media and silverprint on panel

61 x 96 cm

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Chart (Gulf of Carpentaria)

oil, mixed media and silverprint on hydrographic chart on panel

72 x 104 cm

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Chart (Cape York)


72 x 110 cm

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Chart (Lunar Eclipse)


72 x 104 cm

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Chart (Night Wave)


124 x 72 cm

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Sumba


244 x 122 cm

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Orford Ness


61 x 122 cm

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Orford Ness 2


61 x 122 cm

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Orford Ness 4


122 x 184 cm

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Wine Sea


122 x 184 cm

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CV

1969 Born Penzance, Cornwall

1988-91 BA (Hons) Fine Art, Newport

Solo Exhibitions

2009 ‘Voyage’, Millennium, St. Ives

2007 ‘Sea’, New Millennium Gallery, St Ives

2005 ‘Catena’, One0Two Gallery, London

2004 ‘Events’, New Millennium Gallery, St Ives

2002 ‘Labyrinths’, New Millennium Gallery, St Ives

2000 ‘Transition’, Newlyn Art Gallery

Selected Mixed Exhibitions

2009 Mixed Winter, Millennium, St. Ives

London Art Fair, Business Design Centre, Islington

2008 Drawing Show, NSA, Exchange, Penzance

2007 Art Now Cornwall, Tate St Ives

The St Ives School 1997 - 2007, Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff

2006 Fragments, Cafe Gallery Projects, London

Fragments, Tom Thompson Gallery, Owen Sound, Canada

2003 Starting a Collection, Art First Contemporary Art, London

2002 Constructed, Newlyn Art Gallery

2001 Sax Impey, Richard Nott, Ged Quinn, Fermyn Woods Contemporary Art,

Brigstock, Northamptonshire

2000 Ark 2000, Dilston Grove Church, London

1999 The New St Ives Artists, Maidstone Museum and Art Gallery

1998 Common Ground: Sax Impey and Richard Nott, The Book Gallery, St Ives

1997 Kunstbrucke, Dock 11, Berlin

Landmarks, Cafe Gallery Projects, London

1996 Drawing Towards the End of a Century, Newlyn Art Gallery.

Collaborations

2008 with Red Earth: ‘Longshore Drift’, Suffolk

2007 with Red Earth: ‘Enclosure’, Dorset

2005 with Red Earth: ‘Vanishing Point’, Birling Gap, Sussex

with Red Earth: ‘Jalan’, Trafalgar Square, London

with Red Earth: ‘Geograph – Trace’, Birling Gap, Sussex

2004 with Jony Easterby: Samphire Tower, Samphire Hoe, Dover

Residencies

1997 Kunstbrucke, Berlin

Collections

Arts Council Collection

Warwick University

Connaught Hotel

Private collections worldwide

Publications

2009 Voyage, Millennium

2007 Art Now Cornwall, Susan Daniel-McElroy, Tate Publishing

Sea, New Millennium Gallery

2006 On the Very Edge of the Ocean, Ben Tufnell, Tate Publishing

2004 Events, New Millennium Gallery

2002 Arts Council Collection Acquisitions, 1989 - 2002

ARTNSA, NSA Publications

Labyrinths, New Millennium Gallery

2001 Behind the Canvas, S Brittain / S Cook

1998 The Dictionary of Artists in Britain Since 1945, D Buckman

1996 Drawing Towards the End of a Century, NSA Publications

Another View: Art in St Ives, M Whybrow

“...Travelling long distances by sea, on the other hand, gives

us time. Travel is like death in that it requires mourning. The

light melancholy of watching a coastline recede is a necessary

observance. The caves sucked into the water’s surface by the

turning of invisible propellors - each subtly different, each

marbling a dissipating track which stretches back, an elastic

streamer - becomes hypnotic. They set us adrift on inward

voyages where we barely have enough sarcastic energy left to

stop ourselves seeing our frail barks upon the vasty deeps as

paradigmatic. Such time, such long hovering on the edge of

banality, is powerfully restorative. By the time approaching land

is announced we are free to be excited. Later, it seems to us that

only by having breathed the salt air of loss for long enough are

we able to make a properly carefree disembarkation. We have

adjusted. Our biological clocks are reset, our homoiothermal

balance has altered with the latitude, our internal maps - whose

every nautical mile has been felt as travelled - makes sense.

Behind us the ocean is criss-crossed with thousands upon

thousands of multi coloured streamers, a planet festooned

with farewells.”

‘Seven Tenths’, James Hamilton-Paterson

Published by Millennium to coincide with the exhibition ‘Voyage’ by Sax Impey

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers

Printed by Control Print (www.controlprint.co.uk)

Photography and portrait of Sax Impey by Andy Hughes (www.andyhughes.net)

ISBN 978-1-905772-28-5

S t r e e t - a n - P o lS t . I v e s C o r n w a l l0 1 7 3 6 7 9 3 1 2 1m a i l @ m i l l e n n i u m g a l l e r y. c o . u kw w w . m i l l e n n i u m g a l l e r y. c o . u k

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Sax Impey 'Voyage