Wilderness and Warehouses

Andrew Hardwick paints large scale richly textured paintings. His studio is near Avonmouth Docks, Bristol an area of heavy industry, Warehouses and Docks.

In this exhibition, he looks at the vast waste lands that still exist between these workings. Lands mostly now awaiting development, with hedges  gone, marker posts installed, given up by their farmers. His paintings also includes lands so heavily polluted they cannot be used, now  left fenced off.

In this strange transient zone, Nature takes over, not knowing it to be brief, new massive depot Warehouses looming.

The area is infused by the  estuarial light of the nearby brown Sea and countless years of pollution from its industrial neighbours.

He paints both the landscape he sees today and one he remembers, ghost landscapes. Etched with long gone sheep and ships now scrapped. Memories of herding sheep on the saltings by the Sea.

Hardwick paints using a combination of unconventional materials including plaster and soils, all ironically on geotextile membrane. Sheeting put down as the first part in a new development.

The work explores the sensibilities of these forgotten and very powerful places. It questions land use and feelings of memory and loss. However  most of all the work enjoys  the elemental power of this land.