Garry Fabian Miller: Deep Time May 5th – July 2nd, 2021
HackelBury Fine Art, London is pleased to present ‘Deep Time’ a solo exhibition of new work by Garry Fabian Miller in which he contemplates our existence with the unknown and our ability to take chances and evolve as a species.
During the first lockdown in spring 2020 Fabian Miller spent time deeply immersed in the landscape of his native Dartmoor. With life on hold he reflected on his relationship with photography, the end of cibachrome and his beloved darkroom and considered his direction going forward as an artist and how to navigate changing times.
Citing Charles Darwin as ´the colossus in my life´ and talking about photography as an evolutionary medium, he set out to glory in the demise of the darkroom whilst embracing the opportunity for change and adaptation that it brings.
“To be alive is to evolve and fulfil your potential as a species. Those that survive will be those most open and responsive to change and willing to make themselves vulnerable and take chances”.
This maximum exposure to life and what it brings, both individually and collectively, enables Garry Fabian Miller to ask existential questions about his purpose in life. He talks about ‘the act of witness at the beginning and end of the day being central to my life´ and this new work affirms his belief in bringing the core elements of colour and light from nature into his work “to make visible things that are invisible”.
In a sense Fabian Miller paints music and creates abstract compositions in which form and repetition create a rhythm and movement, where the edges of two different colours merge to create a third colour. This ‘in-between place’ or space between the sound resonates and weaves light together to create new pulsating tones. Miller´s recent and ongoing exploration of the colour palette from cibachrome reflects this musical analogy in which notation is built up to create layering that produces a musical harmony and balance.
Fabian Miller´s fundamental belief in nature as the fabric of the earth underpins all his work and allows him to leave space for chance to intervene. His daily immersion in the cycle of life formed by the sun rise and the sun set and the interplay between light and darkness sits at the heart of all his work. This ritualistic exploration of the primordial qualities of light and dark, day and night, the circle and the square, nature and thought, land and sky provides an infinite source of inspiration and produces his poetry of colour in which his work becomes a manifestation of his way of life.
Light, Water, Lambda C-print from dye destruction print, 147.3 x 221 cm / 58 x 87 inches
About Garry Fabian Miller
Garry Fabian Miller was born in Bristol in 1958 and is best known for his boldly coloured abstract work made in the darkroom without a camera. His practice is characterised by long exposures of between one and twenty-four hours and he has mastered the quantities of light needed to achieve nuanced and
precise colours. Channelling light through coloured glass and liquid using cut paper forms, Fabian Miller creates luminous alternative realities that flow between pure abstraction and imagined landscapes. Light, time and colour thus become both medium and subject in his work. These themes are deeply rooted
in Fabian Miller’s sense of place as a rural artist and his connection to nature. He walks the landscape surrounding his Dartmoor studio, absorbing his surroundings before entering the darkroom to begin image-making. The artist becomes the camera, using a language of colour and form developed over 40 years.
Garry Fabian Miller’s first major body of work, Sections of England: The Sea Horizon (1976), made when he was just 19 years old, saw early success in exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in London (1977) and Arnolfini in Bristol (1979) and was later acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York. This series, alongside an earlier intensive study of the remote island community of the Shetlands, heightened Fabian Miller’s interest in rural communities. His choice of an artist’s life outside of metropolitan culture is often likened to the philosophy of the “country potter” drawing inspiration from slowing down and embracing a hands-on approach to the creative process.
Since 1976 Garry Fabian Miller has worked exclusively with light-sensitive Cibachrome paper. In 1984 he put down the camera, working in the darkroom with the light from the enlarger. The production of Cibachrome paper declined sharply in 2005 and fully ceased in 2011, thus prompting Fabian Miller’s Year One (2005) and Year Two (2007) series. In response, he has begun a series of collaborative projects that reimagine his camera-less works. From 2014 he collaborated with Dovecot Tapestry Studios, Edinburgh on a collection of rugs and on the tapestry Voyage into the deepest darkest blue. In 2018 the Victoria and Albert Museum premiered Fabian Miller’s first film, Last evenings, a collaboration with composer and musician Oliver Coates and on-going collaboration with poet Alice Oswald.
Garry Fabian Miller is currently working in an intense period of knowing that his final Cibachrome print could be made any day as he pushes the limits of the last of his materials.
The Victoria & Albert Museum has the largest public collection of the artist’s work having collected pieces for over 25 years His work is held in many public institutions including Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art; The Fogg Art Museum, Boston; the Government Art Collection, UK; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield; Houston Museum of Fine Art; Kasama Nichido Museum of Art, Tokyo; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museet for Fotokunst, Odense; Museum of Contemporary Art, Bangkok; Museum Ritter Waldenbunch, Germany; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach; Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney; and the Sir Elton John Collection, among others.
Since the winter of 1989 Garry Fabian Miller has lived with his family on Dartmoor in the South West of England.
About HackelBury Fine Art
Owned by Sascha Hackel and Marcus Bury, HackelBury Fine Art deals in 20th and 21st century artworks from a carefully selected stable of artists. Established in 1998, the London gallery in Launceston Place
is committed to nurturing long-term relationships with both artists and clients. It continues to evolve and progress through an expanding program of gallery exhibitions, museum projects and publishing ventures.
The gallery’s primary focus is on pioneering contemporary mid-career artists, with an emphasis on museum projects. Pushing the boundaries of various media: the work and practice of these artists encompasses the worlds of photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture and performance.
