City News

Until 13th May 2007 Ikon Gallery presents First Light, an exhibition of new work by Robert Groves, one of its founders. Taking place at the National Trust’s Packwood House, it consists of a selection of drawings inspired by the remarkable topiary in the gardens there, revealing the artist’s continuing preoccupation with abstraction derived from the real world.  Part of Ikon’s extensive offsite programme of positioning work outside of conventional gallery spaces, First Light acquires a poignancy through its particular location; the Lookout Room on Packwood’s first floor.  In this context, the viewer is caught in a mirrored exchange between artwork and subject, between the drawings on the walls and the verdant composition outside the window.

First Light comprises a series of small scale crayon drawings on paper. A transitional light casts shadows onto proud topiaries. Deserted gardens with a house hidden amongst the trees appear as intriguing settings for untold scenarios. These scenes are built up in negative silhouette form, composed of colours worked onto a black background. Modelled hedgerows assume sculptural form, yet are strangely humanised; living things, they exude an eery stillness, growing yet trapped in time; a symbol of the human interference with the natural landscape on account of their shaping and inhibited growth.

Packwood House was lovingly restored to reflect life in the 17th century by Graham Baron Ash in the 1920s and 30s. Located in the ancient Forest of Arden, the house with its lavish interiors, offers a fascinating example of Tudor and Jacobean architecture. The garden, designed to portray ‘the sermon on the mount’ slopes upwards from the house, as an avenue of topiaries lead up to a raised path which circles upwards and round finally reaching a wooden seat beneath a yew tree. It is from this raised vantage point that the artist observed the house, its chimneys and leaded windows peeping between the yew branches.

Ikon gratefully acknowledges the support of The National Trust.