Ben Long - Moving Landscape
Road-side Billboard Location: 166 Stockton Road, TS5 4AD | Visible 24/7 during Middlesbrough Art Week.
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Derived from observations made in transit, these motion-blurred vistas are digital manipulations of historically significant 19th Century oil landscapes, captured as if moving at high velocity through these idyllic rural environments. Paintings by artists expressing a romantic outlook of tranquillity and country life, are reconsidered in relation to a modern romance with speed and the rapid pace of contemporary experience.
Can you introduce your installation ‘Moving Landscape’?
For MAW 2023 I will be exhibiting 'Moving Landscape – Medmenham Abbey Buckinghamshire (after Henry H. Parker)'. This is a motion-blurred artwork derived from a 19th-century oil painting by Parker held in the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art collection. 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. Moving Landscapes are an ongoing series of works, and each artwork is exhibited publicly on large format billboards. The ‘Moving Landscape’ for Middlesbrough will be shown on Stockton Road, the artwork's proximity to surrounding motorway bridges, train lines, and bypasses adding to the dynamism of this altered image.
Why did you choose to manipulate this painting?
It’s the oil landscape from the MIMA collection that I felt looked the best when manipulated, that simple really… it was just an aesthetic judgment. 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. Not every painting lends itself to the process I apply, but this one remained vibrant and distinct. These artworks usually take about a month to digitally paint because the image is divided up into receding layers to create depth and the illusion of perspective. So in the first instance, I'll create a quick, rough test to help me identify which paintings are likely to yield the best results.
How do ‘Moving Landscapes’ explore themes surrounding the environment, landscapes and site specificity?
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.
How do you think ‘Moving Landscapes’ connect to this year’s Middlesbrough Art Week theme MEASURE?
I suppose that these works are a measure of the present moment in relation to the past. Romantic period oil paintings typically have an outlook of tranquillity, harmony, and contented country life, but ‘Moving Landscapes’ reconsiders this in relation to a modern romance with speed and the rapid pace of contemporary experience. I think we would all agree that most aspects of contemporary life are accelerating at an unprecedented rate. This might be exhilarating to some and overwhelming to others. Sometimes as individuals, we feel both polarities simultaneously. 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.
Previously you exhibited at MAW in 2021 with ‘Level Structures’. This is another series influenced by art history, in this case, Sol LeWitt and American Minimalism. Can you discuss the particular influence of Minimal art?
I’m inspired by American Minimalism, but only in the way that I am inspired by Romantic Art, Pop Art, Futurism, Constructivism, Modernism, Dada, Surrealism, Cubism, Conceptualism, etc. You might call that postmodernism! It’s just the fabric of art history, and individual works from that history are exciting and can be re-used to make new art. Just as Duchamp opened the floodgates by taking the urinal and presenting it as an artwork, it is by extension perfectly logical that any art historical work could be considered familiar and everyday enough to be used under the same rules of engagement. It’s like sampling in music; the proto Hip Hop musician has no drum kit, but they do have a copy of James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’ with which to loop Clyde Stubblefield’s breakbeat and form the basis of a new track, and perhaps create and entirely new genre of music in the process!
How does your practice discuss work and physical labour?
I would say that British working-class culture has had the foremost influence on my artistic ideas. It’s the backdrop I was born into. My father worked in construction, project managing large sites all over the North of England. When I was younger I worked for him on numerous building sites during the academic holidays, building schools, hospitals, and retail spaces. My parents weren't particularly interested in art so I didn't have the opportunity to go to galleries from a young age. But then again, they would always build or convert houses we lived in and I think this became their creative outlet. Eventually, they bought an old, remote petrol station, demolished the canopy, took the tanks out of the ground, and lived inside the shop part of the petrol station whilst they built a new family home around it. It wasn't like they weren't creative people, it was just that they weren't initiated into the complexities of Modern Art. Possibly they were intimidated by it... or too practically minded.
Your work uses a lot of everyday and industrial materials. Where do you think the very human aspects come into your work?
With my work, the medium is often the message, and this is backed by a desire to make art that rejects elitism or cultural snobbery. I believe an artwork has very little relevance if it doesn’t have the potential to reach every segment of society, and in order to attempt that, adaptability and modularity are key strategies I use. So with a project like ‘Scaffolding Sculptures’ for example, I’m interested in the idea that these pieces can be dismantled and subsequently reformed into a new work. It’s an interest that speaks to the way in which planned environments and their infrastructure are constantly subject to change, evolution, degradation, and renewal over time. You can read ‘Scaffolding Sculptures’ as a way of playing at building – just as a child dismantles one Lego creation in order to create a new one, I place emphasis on the continued development of one work into the next.
So the idea of ephemerality is important?
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. My feeling is that an artwork doesn’t always have to be physically there to do or have done its job and had an effect. Art is a pebble that causes ripples when dropped in water. The first work I made was a project called ‘The Great Travelling Art Exhibition’; this was a series of drawings I created by scribing into the layer of emission dirt built up on the rear shutters of haulage trucks. As the trucks travelled around the UK on their regular deliveries, so too were my drawings disseminated for viewing on public roads and highways. In this way 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!
Is there an element of nostalgia in your work?
I don’t think so. As we’ve discussed there is an element of looking back and being inspired by events of the past, but I certainly don’t consider that nostalgia. I’m a contemporary artist and I make works about my time now. I remember one truck driver I travelled with when I was making ‘The Great Travelling Art Exhibition’; he was particularly keen on the 19th Century Romantic landscape artists. It seemed unlikely but he would get all animated about the paintings of Constable held in the National Gallery in London, and he'd start gesturing out of his side window as we drove at speed through parts of rural England. He'd say, “Wow Ben! Just look at that view!" and "Why don't you paint something like that?” His suggestions were meant as an evocation of nature and the sublime, but 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.
Moving Landscape by artist Ben Long
Medmenham Abbey, Buckinghamshire (after Henry H. Parker)
Road-side Billboard
Location: 166 Stockton Road, TS5 4AD
24/7