COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE Tom Wood – Paysages intimes

COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE
Tom Wood – Paysages intimes
du 13 novembre 2015 au 10 janvier 2016
Vernissage le 12 novembre 15, 18h – 21h, entrée libre
Commissaire : Mark Durden, directeur de l’European Centre for Photography, University of South Wales
Conversation entre Tom Wood et Mark Durden, 18h, entrée libre, réservation conseillée, en anglais
After party en musique, 20h, entrée libre
Né en Irlande en 1951, Tom Wood est internationalement reconnu pour ses photographies de la vie
urbaine, prises pour la plupart à Liverpool entre 1978 et 2003. C’est à cette date qu’il s’est installé au Pays
de Galles pour se consacrer à ce qu’il appelle la « question du paysage ».
Cette exposition se concentre sur la relation de Tom Wood au paysage irlandais, a fortiori celui du comté
de Mayo. Depuis 1975, l’artiste retourne chaque année dans cette région que sa famille a dû quitter pour
s’installer en Angleterre dans les années 50, pour des raisons d’intolérance religieuse. En découle une
pluralité d’approches envers ce lieu avec lequel il entretient une relation douce-amère à la fois subjective
et objective, tant sur les sujets que par la technique.
Des vues de ce paysage sauvage, souvent capturées lors de quatre décennies d’allers et retour en voiture,
bus ou train, se combinent avec des portraits intimes de la vie quotidienne de cette communauté rurale
qu’il affectionne tant – vie de la ferme et sa famille, intérieurs de cottages ou boutiques – prises
récemment en format panoramique. Des courtes séquences vidéo de conversations concomitantes
viennent compléter l’exposition.
L’artiste a bénéficié du soutien de l’Arts Council of Wales et Mostyn pour son travail sur le paysage, qui a
également été exposé à Lectoure en 2014. Une publication en trois tomes intitulée « Tom Wood:
Landscapes » sera éditée chez Steidl à la fin de l’année. Extraits du texte de présentation de Mark Durden
ci-dessous.
Les clichés de Tom Wood figurent dans les plus importantes collections de photographies, telles celles du
MoMA à New York et du Victoria & Albert Museum à Londres. Son travail a été le sujet d’expositions
majeures à I’International Centre of Photography, New York, la FOAM Gallery, Amsterdam, le Museum of
Modern Art, Oxford, la C/O, Berlin, la Photographers' Gallery, London, ainsi qu’à l’Art Institute of Chicago,
The National Museum of Photography, Copenhague ou le Walker Art Gallery , Liverpool.
L’artiste est représenté en France par la galerie Sit Down (Paris 3ème), où ses œuvres galloises seront
exposées du 10 novembre au 20 décembre 2015.
Horaires d’ouverture de l’exposition : Du mardi au samedi de 14h à 18h ; le mercredi
jusqu'à 20h ; le dimanche de 12h30 à 14h30. Fermé le lundi, les 17, 21-25 nov ainsi que du
24 déc au 4 jan.
Adresse et contacts : Centre Culturel Irlandais, 5 rue des Irlandais, 75005 Paris
Tél : 01 58 52 10 30 - www.centreculturelirlandais.com
Presse : Rosetta Beaugendre - [email protected]
 Extraits de l’essai de Mark Durden pour la publication Steidl en trois tomes « Tom
Wood: Landscapes » : Comté de Mayo, Irlande ; Merseyside, Angleterre ; Pays de
Galles
“Tom Wood photographs instinctually and often. His work is driven by a ceaseless curiosity about people,
places and things in the world, drawn from environments that he is living in or connected with. Known as a
photographer of people and identified with the urban setting of Merseyside, he has since the early 2000s
been preoccupied with what he has referred to as “the matter of landscape”. In 2003 he moved from
Wallasey in Merseyside to Caerwys in North Wales to photograph its landscape full time, in particular the
rather plain and ordinary landscape of fields, woodlands, hedgerows and lanes near his Welsh home.”
… “Photography is wedded to the world; it cannot escape a documentary role. But Wood does not like to
be seen as a documentary photographer. His concern lies with photography’s pictorial identity over and
above any implied social message. Questions of form, of what makes a good picture, are integral to his
approach to photography. Form concentrates us on what photography is and does. The experimental
Structural films he saw while a student of Fine Art at Leicester Polytechnic have a clear bearing on his
pictures, the same fascination with the materiality of the medium and a healthy disregard for rules and
conventions.”
… “With his handheld “volatile” pictures, photography is brought closer to the fleeting and mobile way in
which we look about us. Wood very often does not use the viewfinder, but instead moves his camera
towards the subject, already identified as something of interest. In this respect, this is a photography of
and about gesture. Such photographs give the sense of pauses in a sense of on-going movements and
moments, a quality accented by the fact he is often moving when he takes such pictures, from a car,
bicycle, train or bus. How they are taken is integral to their look.”
…”In his Ireland volume, the most personal and mysterious of the three books, we have the recurrence of
journeying, of open roads running back into the picture, and partial views often seen or glimpsed from the
car he is travelling in. In one view snatched through a car’s open passenger window and set against a
blurred expanse of green foliage, we can just make out the roof of a house, reflected in a rain-spattered
wing mirror. We don't know what importance the building might have, if any. But we suspect it has
significance. The picture conveys a sense of searching, of trying to hold on to something, that
characterises so many of his photographs.”
…“In a touching portrait of his father, Charlie and Granny’s Lillies (with iron cart-wheel tyre), his formal
frontal pose is offset by the way his shirt hangs out of his unbuttoned-up trousers, its shape echoing those
of the white lilies before him— a rhyme that fits with other depictions in the book showing him variously
attached and involved with nature. One portrait depicts him getting up from the grass, his position
rhyming with the cows in the field and the mountain behind him. His physical closeness to the soil is a
clear metaphor for his belonging.”
…”Land and the use of land recurs in these pictures as do scenes of attachment and contact, from the
blurry glimpse of a calf suckling a cow by the roadside to people shown at work in the fields. Human
bonds, generational and family ties recur, as do certain places. One gets the sense of encircling and
depicting the same area, over and over. The very act and activity of photography is for Wood affiliative, it
is about making connections.”
…”The same mountain, Nephin, occurs in many pictures, an anchoring background feature.”
…”Many photographs show the backs of people, their bodies carrying the expressivity and animation of the
conversations many seem to be having between them. …People are often shown unawares and it is the
beauty of unobserved interactions, redolent of bonds between people and with places that is conveyed
again and again in these pictures— the sense of social warmth glimpsed on a cold street corner, for
example, as we observe the backs of men, all engrossed in lively discussion. …In a panoramic view, a group
of men, of differing ages, by the window at a remote and small airport at Knock, watch people arrive by
plane— a reflection on the long absences from home that have to come to characterise the lives of many.“
…”Wood has also amassed hundreds of hours of video footage while in Ireland, mostly unedited. …the
view from a car travelling down a long undulating lane at night, together with the sounds of the music
playing inside it… portraits and stories, snatches of conversation and the last gestures of an elderly person
filmed with the camera on his deathbed, concentrating on the movements of his frail arms and hands.”
…”The land and landscape in Ireland has a strong relationship to the nationalist struggle. While Wood’s art
is not overtly political, certain photographs draw attention to this history.”
…”Some panoramas show the construction of new houses during what was to be a short-lived economic
boom in Ireland.”
…”When Wood makes landscapes from trains and buses, one is especially conscious of brevity, of
moments that are stilled by the camera. Time becomes the subject, evident through a series of pictures
taken from the train, as he travels to and from Liverpool, showing a church and cemetery made over many
years, registering the gradual expansion of graves.”
Mark Durden is a writer, artist and academic. He has written extensively on photography and contemporary
art. Publications include: Dorothea Lange (2001, 2012, 2015), Fifty Key Writers on Photography (2012),
Photography Today (2014), with David Campbell, Variable Capital (2007) and with Ken Grant, Double
Take: Portraits from the Keith Medley Archive (2013). He is part of the artists’ group Common Culture and
currently Professor of Photography at the University of South Wales, UK.