Red Door 29

Coming soon to Red Door Gallery:
A solo exhibition by UK artist Alan Rankle
Alan Rankle looks to the past in order to paint the future –
and has done for two decades.
As he has explained: ‘I wanted to relate ideas about
historical, idealised, pastoral landscape in art to the grim
reality of the environmental crisis that we are in… Considering
the historical origins of the genre in relation to my own
paintings, I wanted to convey the irony implicit in how the
19th century Romantic movement, with its emphasis on the
idyllic natural world of an imaginary past, was sponsored
by people who, having made gigantic fortunes out of the
Industrial Revolution by building their empires on the slave
trade and the criminal use of the Enclosures Acts forcing
the poor from their traditional peasant homes to work
in their factories and mills, also laid the foundations of
environmental pollution on a catastrophic scale’.
So if his landscapes look corroded and polluted, that is to
the rhetorical point – but they are beautiful, too - drawing us
in to his argument, but also suggesting a recognition of the
temptations that led us to where we are.
by Paul Caray-Kent.
Alan Rankle (b. 1952) UK
@alanrankleprojects
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