NADENE GHOURI Review

ALAN RANKLE : WILDERNESS APPROACHING
 
Visiting the blackShed gallery near Robertsbridge in East Sussex is quite an
experience. A turn off an anonymous stretch of the A21 takes you down an
anonymous country lane into an anonymous looking farm into an equally anonymous
looking former chicken shed. The shed houses the gallery – hence the name.  The
adventure of getting there makes one feel much more than a mere observer. So it’s
quite fitting that once inside, the revelation of the current exhibition Alan Rankle :
Wilderness Approaching also pulls one out of the ordinary and into an otherworldly
dimension.

Oldham born Rankle is most often defined as a landscape painter albeit with a
mission to revitalise the genre by challenging and uprooting traditional ways of
painting. True enough, he does paint iconic and powerful oils on canvas which
reference Turner and other classicists.  But, as this latest exhibition shows, Rankle is
moved by the sense of otherness, the magic, brutality and wilderness of the natural
world; and yet at the same time follows the formalism of his hero Francis Bacon. He
paints as the romantic poets wrote verse. Wild, untamed, adventurous yet at the same
time elegant, restrained and with perfect narrative form.  Looking at some of these
new works it’s as if Coleridge’s famous poem  Kubla Khan had come to life on
Rankle’s canvas.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

One can almost hear the sound of the poet’s pen scribbling furiously, both poet and
viewer standing on the same windswept Yorkshire moor as dusk sets. Few landscape
artists, historical or contemporary, have the power of Rankle to drag the viewer so
firmly up and along into the scene, so much so that you are left feeling mildly
unsettled. You are not only viewing the work, you become part of it. I suspect if
Coleridge were alive today he and Rankle would be drinking buddies, downing the
next Absinthe chaser before a brisk walk across the wild terrain.

As Kenton Lowe, the enterprising director of the blackShed gallery enthusiastically
tells me, Rankle has had a busy year with solo exhibitions in Canada, and
Copenhagen as well as taking part in group shows in London, Milan and Bolonga. 
Each canvas takes weeks, sometimes months of layering texture upon texture until it
is finished. However, it’s no surprise to learn that in the weeks leading up to this

exhibition at the blackShed gallery Rankle had a rare period of space and reflection.
The works exhibited were started, then left, then returned to, then left again, then
worked on some more, until finally here they hang in a former chicken shed. This is
some of Rankle’s most powerful and thought provoking work to date and the unusual
setting couldn’t be more fitting for an artist who has never shied away from risk.
Rankle's Northern roots also play a large part in his visual narrative. From the
depictions of moor and dale to the angry gestural splashes of colour emblazoned
across the canvas. He often creates a classic topographical image and distorts and
manipulates it to reveal a sense of a viscerally real place.  For him the unstable
environment we inhabit is inextricably linked to the brash politics and economic woes
of our time. He wears his heart on his sleeve in much of the work in Wilderness
Approaching, the title taken from a song by John Cale wherein a sign warns of
wilderness approaching, take great care as though nature were another roadside
attraction to view at a distance. This is perhaps most visible in City on the Edge of
Change – a staggeringly visceral piece where a lone tree stands in what might be a
river bed or what might equally be a scene of post nuclear devastation or the setting
for a Scandinavian horror film. Only an artist as comprehensively gifted as Rankle
could hint at underlying dark forces beneath outlying light and beauty. Across the
canvas are scrawled the words: Falling Earth. In Enigma : Light of the World an
unmistakably English moor and deep sky are daubed with eerie white splashes of
paint, as if a tornado of angry light had passed across. And in Wilderness
Approaching – the painting from which the exhibition takes its name, a falling leaf
and gestural sweeps of black warn of the impending storm which lurks broodingly at
the back of the depicted moorland scene.

It’s only an hour’s drive from London and I urge metropolitan art lovers to make the
effort to visit this exhibition at such a unique gallery. The experience of the blackShed
is remarkable, but don’t be fooled by the simple exterior of the chicken shed. This
new gallery under the direction of Mr Lowe is already making a name for itself with a
series of shows by internationally recognised artists including Kirsten Reynolds, who
works across a spectrum of painting, photography and installation and who's
collaborative exhibitions with Rankle as Rankle & Reynolds have gained critical
plaudits in Italy, Switzerland and Denmark where they have found a receptive
audience; and Andrew Kotting, who was recently described on Radio 4's Front Row
as the UK's best independent film-maker. The blackShed also presents younger artists
currently receiving critical acclaim such as Robert Sample, a painter who is also
reinventing classical tradition with his brooding and dark but strikingly fresh and
modern takes on the old Dutch masters. 

After the hype and gimicks of much in the contemporary art world, it’s genuinely
refreshing to see painting being honoured as it deserves. And don’t be fooled by the
apparent simplicity of the received description of Rankle as a landscape painter.  His
politics, his urgency - are vital. His message is now.