Cromwell Place exhibition presents work by John Latham alongside that of Alberto Burri

6 October 2020

The Cromwell Place arts membership organisation, in partnership with Flat Time House and The Denish Mahon Foundation, presents 'Time and Eternal Life' at its newly developed South Kensington location from 10 October 2020. The exhibition, split into three sections, spans over five millennia in its exploration of time and eternity from antiquity to the modern era.

Following a section spanning Ancient Egypt to sixteenth-century Italy, the exhibition's second chapter focuses on Alberto Burri (1915-1995) and John Latham (1921-2006), and their engagements with time and landscape. In 1968 an earthquake struck the Belice Valley in Sicily and left the town of Gibellina in ruins. Twenty years later, Alberto Burri unveiled his immense work of land art, Il Grande Cretto, covering an entire hillside in undulating monolithic slabs of concrete and preserving the memory of the landscape in all its fragmentation. Around the same time in Scotland, John Latham was also transforming landscape into artwork by preserving monumental deposits of excess coal in the West Lothian and Midlothian countryside triggered a unique strand of work. Both Latham and Burri responded to landscape, and to their experiences in the Second World War, by creating wounds: tearing, cutting, and scorching the canvas.

'Time and Eternal Life' is on view until 22 November, and coincides with the reopening of Latham's former home and gallery, Flat Time House, with an archival selection of the artist's works until 20 November.

Image: details of John Latham's Bachelor Experience Negative (1962)