The 17th Century Landscape Painting/ VASA Project

Abstract

David Alker
17th Century Landscape Painting /VASA project

Alker started work on the 17th Century Landscape Painting Project with original research at the VASA Museet in Stockholm in 2009. He made a number of research visits to the museum specifically to document the diorama of the Stockholm shipyards. This describes the construction of the museum centrepiece, the ill-fated VASA warship in the 1620’s. The project investigates the role of the museum as narrator and the relationship between the narrative, as articulated through the diorama, and the artefact, the preserved warship. In his paintings, Alker explores the durational aspect, dramatic space, artificial lighting and theatrical devices of the diorama. His paintings deconstruct the continuity of the landscape/shipyard narrative and recasts this as a series of individual episodes. These focus on pre-industrial shipbuilding techniques, lifting and climbing equipment, transportation and stockpiling of physical materials. When the paintings are seen as a group the isolated segments come together to form the shipyard landscape.
In this series of works, Alker uses the trope of absence characteristic of some early ‘landscape’ painting as in Breughel’s Landscape and the Fall of Icarus c1560 (attribution).
David Alker’s work engages with diverse contexts. These include film, the artist’s studio, art history, history and rock music. He investigates the construction of historical narrative through documentation. Previous works include ‘reconstructions’ of Mondrian’s Studio, New York, 1944 and Malevich’s Last Futurist Exhibition at Marsovo Pole, Petrograd 1915.

The painting Stacks of Wood, from The 17th Century Landscape Painting Project
Royal Academy Summer Show,
Royal Academy, London
13 June-20 August 2017
Visitor attendance 197K

Other works from this series shown at:
Hanover Project Research Show, Bloc Projects, Sheffield 26 April – 12 May 2017
Rogue Artists 21st Anniversary Exhibition, the final show at Crusader Mill, Manchester 2016.