Artizan Gallery welcomes Steve Thorpe to their Main Gallery this April, curating a show of the much travelled, now Devon based artist, Steve Thorpe. The work exhibited in the exhibition is a homage to some of those travels.
When Steve visited Santiago de Compostela, the town at the end of the famous pilgrimage across Spain, he was amazed to see a pile of walking sticks on display. They conveyed the adventures, experiences, perhaps even the thoughts, of all those individuals who had undertaken a long walk. It brought home how the everyday act of walking is also completely special; life changing perhaps.
In this work Steve has tried to harness the modesty and directness of those materials [the walking sticks] with the meaning they inadvertently carry. His artistic pilgrimage has taken the form of many years of collecting materials on walks and cycle rides, limiting his finds to sticks and stones that come from specific places: rivers, mountain tops, islands, lakes, and holy sites for instance. When you see a colour in the work, you are looking at a piece of rock, often from a distant place, that has been ground down to powder. When you see each piece of wood, each has a unique colour, texture, and shape, that has been formed by its journey across river and ocean.
The pleasure of walking seems to be that we make special contact with the world when we slow down to walk. In his practice Steve slows down to make art. It takes time to collect the materials, and it takes time to grind down stones in a pestle and mortar. It's a peaceful process. Its hopefully when the alchemy happens!
The Long Walk runs from 16th April – 7th May with a private viewing on 15th April 6 - 8 pm. For more information on the exhibition visit https://www.art-hub.co.uk/ex/longwalk22 or to join us for the launch visit https://www.art-hub.co.uk/events-1/april22pv
Tuesday - Saturday 11 am - 5 pm