Date/Time
Date(s) - 10/06/2023
10:00 am - 4:30 pm
Location
Coniston
Category(ies)
Exhibitions
Earthly Windows
Earthly Windows consists of four chapters in which young Dutch photographer Loek van Vliet (1988) through different cultural historical lenses explores the European landscape. Besides being an intelligent exploration through different historical eras Van Vliet has also explored ideas of alternative and contradictory perspective. He writes: “A photographic image often does little justice to what is actually in front of the camera. This is because the camera has one fundamental flaw: it has a single, stationary eye. It can capture only a single moment, a single perspective. This is nothing like the experience of reality, in which you are always moving through space and time.”
In Earthly Windows this journey begins with the depiction of the Medieval Period, where you are taken along the oldest pilgrim’s route to Santiago de Compostella. In France he climbed the Mont Ventoux – Following Petrarch’s footsteps – to depict the new world of the Renaissance. Here in the Lake District he photographed various mines. They are the representation of the Industrial Revolution – a landscape scarred by human activity. The final chapter, the Twentieth Century, covers the impressions and experience forced upon you driving over the German Autobahn.
This way of seeing presupposes a through thoughts filtered experience of space. Van Vliet elevates the work beyond a personal vision, as art historian Dr. Wim Kranendonk words it: “With Earthly Windows, Van Vliet also takes a unique stance in this regard: his photos invite one to observe the world in multiple ways and from varying orientations – each time with an alternatively coloured view.”
Dutch art critic Merel Bem wrote about this body of work: “Earthly Windows yields photographs that made me forget I was sitting on a couch with a book in my hands. Some images brought the landscape so near, I even forgot I was looking at a photograph.”
In the exhibition in the Ruskin Museum in Coniston all four chapters are present, in total 28 works. As well as the corresponding catalogue of the whole body of work, which in itself is a very special edition, with a harmonic cover, pages that will fold out to roughly 100cm width, and all 90 images of the project. This catalogue was shortlisted for the Photobook of the Year 2020 in PhotoEspana, Madrid.
Venue: The Ruskin Museum, Coniston, Cumbria LA21 8DU
Open every day from 10am until 4.30pm in The Ruskin Museum
Admission charges: Adults £8.00 | Children (under 16) £4.50 | Family (2 adults, 2 children) £22.50 | Children (under 5) FREE
Website link: ruskinmuseum.com
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