Exposed Painting Green Lake
Summary
Display Label
Absent Presence 19 June 2015 – 3 January 2016 Manchester Art Gallery recently acquired Exposed Painting Green Lake, 2012, by contemporary artist Callum Innes. This new display of works from our collection takes its inspiration from this painting. It looks at how art captures a moment in time and asks how a subject can be present in an artwork, yet absent at the same time. Innes created this Exposed Painting by a process of ‘unpainting’: brushing off the top layer of black paint to reveal the deep green colour underneath, leaving traces of brushstrokes behind. In this way, he both removes the image and leaves its presence visible. The paintings in this gallery all require a similar heightened level of looking, a searching for traces of the absent. The artists are often playing with the concept of time, adding presences from the past into scenes of the present. A literal example is this Victorian family photograph. The image of the boy has been inserted after his death to show that for his family, he remains forever present. When the subject is absent, we try to find the missing presence in what remains.
Object Name
Exposed Painting Green Lake
Creators Name
Date Created
2012
Dimensions
unframed: 160.3cm x 156.2cm
accession number
2014.112
Support
linen
Medium
oil paint
Credit
This painting was acquired by Manchester Art Gallery with the help of a donation from Dr Geoffrey Nicholson.
Legal
©The artist and Frith Street Gallery and photography Heidi Kosaniuk Innes.