Darren Almond’s diverse practice incorporates film, installation, sculpture, and photography, to produce evocative meditations on time and duration as well as the themes of personal and historical memory.
Almond is interested in the notions of geographical limits and the means of getting there – in particular, culturally specific points of arrival and departure. Since 1998, Almond has been making a series of landscape photographs known as the Fullmoons. Taken during a full moon with an exposure time of 15 minutes or more, these images of remote geographical locations appear ghostly, bathed in an unexpectedly brilliant light where night seems to have been turned into day. Many of Almond’s works are filmed in wide-ranging – and often inaccessible - geographical locations such as the Arctic Circle, Siberia, the holy mountains in China or the source of the Nile. The artist followed a sulfur miner in Indonesia during one of the laborer’s daily journeys from the mouth of a crater to the weighing station to produce Bearing, shot with a high definition camera. In Schacta, Almond filmed the activities of a Kazakhstani tin mine and set them against a haunting soundtrack – made as a field recording – of a local female musician/shaman during her performance.
Other works explore themes closer to home: Traction is an ambitious three-screen projection that draws a portrait of the artist’s father, laying bare external and internal scars, whilst revealing the artist’s preoccupation with time. A similar intimacy is evoked in If I Had You, a multi-screened film installation about the artist’s grandmother – a tender portrait of youthful reminiscence and the dignity of old age. In Terminus, Almond negotiated to relocate the original bus shelters of the town of Oswiecim (formerly Auschwitz) to make a moving installation about historical loss. Another realization of time was achieved with the work Tide, in which 600 digital clocks were lined up along the entirety of a wall simultaneously registering the relentless passage of time, especially relevant to the ‘clocking in and out’ procedure of mechanized labor.
Darren Almond was born in 1971 in Wigan, UK and lives and works in London. Solo exhibitions include Villa Pignatelli-Casa della Fotografia, Naples, Italy (2018); Mudam, Luxembourg (2017); Museum Sinclair Haus, Bad Homberg, Germany (2016); Scai the Bathhouse, Tokyo (2016); New Art Centre, Salisbury, UK (2016); Neue Galerie, Graz, Austria (2015); Dirimart, Istanbul (2015); Bloomberg Space, London (2014); Art Tower Mito, Japan (2013); Sala Alcalá 31, Madrid (2013); Château Gallery, Domaine Régional de Chaumont-sur-Loire, France (2012); The High Line, New York (2011); Villa Merkel, Esslingen am Neckar, Germany (2011); L'Abbaye de la Chaise Dieu, France (2011); Frac Normandie, Rouen, France (2011); FRAC Auvergne, Clermont Ferrand, France (2011); and Parasol Unit, London (2008). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018); Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (2017); Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France (2016); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2015); Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2015); Helmhaus, Zurich, Switzerland (2011); 6th Biennale de Curitiba, Brazil (2011); Miami Art Museum (2011); Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sûr-Seine, France (2010); Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2009); Frac Lorraine, Metz, France (2009); 2nd Moscow Biennale (2007); and The Turner Prize, Tate Britain, London (2005).