David Thorpe’s Installation at Camden Arts Centre

Friday, 16 February 2007 00:11

London - Camden Arts Centre presents David Thorpe’s new and most ambitious installation to date.  The Defeated Life Restored has been specially commissioned for spacious Gallery 3.  Thorpe is known for his meticulous collages combining architectural structures and natural wildernesses. Here huge, intricately constructed wood and coloured-glass screens are set with large-scale heraldic and botanical studies.  This all forms the backdrop to three totemic star-sculptures covered in hand-cast tiles. On exhibition 27 April – 01 July 2007.

”Started last summer, David Thorpe’s latest work is the result of a very intensive and exciting project.  This extraordinary display of craftsmanship and homage to work and making allows the viewer to experience the imaginary architecture that Thorpe is famous for in a uniquely direct way.“...Jenni Lomax, Director Camden Arts Centre.

Thorpe’s work sees a coming together of historic worlds with contemporary ideas.  At a distance the beautifully detailed botanical watercolours recall early nature studies but on closer inspection they emanate a quasi-religious and strangely futuristic aura.  Thorpe’s use of the screen represents a barrier which is at once intellectual and physical, separating the museum landscape from Thorpe’s own and providing points of entry, resistance and privacy.

Thorpe is interested in the grand failures of 17^th-century land reformers - as advocated in the poetry and resistance of the Digger and Ranter movements.  He also refers to the social consciousness and spiritual harmony advocated by the early 20^th-century Arts and Crafts movement.  Thorpe’s own artwork can be interpreted as containing a social proclamation towards making life better, not through returning to these past ideas of utopian communities, but through a sense of self-sufficiency, or remaining in what he has called ‘a state of exile’.

Camden Arts Centre is a venue for contemporary visual art and education, where ideas are made visible and people of all ages and abilities can engage in the creative process of making art.  Our pioneering and varied programme of artist-led courses and other education activities has gained an international reputation as a model of good practice.  We are known as a forward-thinking organization where artists and others can see, make and talk about art.  Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road, London NW3 6DG.  Visit www.camdenartscentre.org