Life In Deep Time is the second solo exhibition by Sholto Blissett at Hannah Barry Gallery. An ambitious presentation of eleven new paintings, the exhibition marks a significant shift in the visual language and emotional tone of Blissett’s work as he turns his eye to a series of large-scale nocturnal and subterranean scenes. Continuing his exploration of the aesthetics of ‘Nature’ and how our contemporary moment challenges the ways in which we have historically chosen to understand our place in society and in the natural world, Life in Deep Time pushes Blissett’s work toward a new mystical dimension, drawing equally from prehistory to the unfathomable reach of the future. From the cool expanse of mountainous valleys to the immensity of tenebrous cave systems, illuminated by contrasting lustres of fire, ice and moonlight, together Blissett’s work explores the tenderness between natural architecture, ecological thought, human fantasy and celestial forms of light and visibility.

Throughout Life in Deep Time, we see a transition away from the classical paradigm and centralised subject of human architecture, whether serenely fortified or on the brink of natural catastrophe, as seen in Blissett’s previous bodies of work, Rubicon, Ship of Fools and Garden of Hubris. Palazzo architectures, cold travertine walls and blank municipal facades – visual shorthands for Western power – are here diminished, or rather transformed into an obscure and animistic entanglement between man-made and geological forms: the carved stone of a rotunda blending into a great helix of desiccated fissures in a cavernous wall; a night time silhouette of ancient columns confounded into the unworldly mirage of a surrounding forest. Coupled with the depth and magnitude of geological architecture, or the nocturnal light borrowed from our celestial neighbours, Blissett calls attention to our manufactured and shifting relationship between social constructions of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ – their cosmically entwined, spectral and thorny coexistence.

Blissett’s paintings, achieved through layers of oil undertones and detailed in a meticulous mosaic of architectural, oceanic and topographical forms, deploy a commanding centralised viewpoint. Uncommon for classical perspective painting, this approach establishes a direct and dynamic relationship that emphasises the will to order and control, but also speaks to the solipsistic and romantic conception of an individualised subject at the centre of all experience. Used historically as means to illustrate the power of God in nature, imaginary painted landscapes, such as those of the Dutch Golden Age or the sublime allegories of German Romanticist Caspar David Friedrich, have traditionally use this technique to fold cultural constructions of ‘wilderness’ into a fetishised view of nature out there, exterior and separate from the human – aesthetic counterparts to modern science’s use of taxonomies, mountaineering, museum collections and the ‘self’ in contrast to the ‘other’ as tools to delimit the boundaries between nature and culture.

Life in Deep Time speaks to this tradition of painting – its reverence for the natural world, its often-mystical undertones and the sheer pleasure of physical sensation: fresh air, daylight, wind, moisture, cold and warmth – all the while subtly calling to attention its inherited perspectives. For Blissett, it is the purifying dualism this discourse offers that is questioned and subverted through his uncanny, dreamlike visions – with increasing metaphysical force. Exploring surreal natural landscapes with a near-sculptural use of negative space, coloured and brought to life through oscillating feelings of magnitude and irreverence, desire, memory, order and collapse, Blissett demonstrates that the separation of nature and culture is no longer – nor has it even been – tenable, illustrating that the more we attempt to separate these two spheres, the more we realise how inseparably entwined they really are.

In collaboration with London-based independent publisher Foolscap Editions, we are pleased to present a specially made short run publication centred on Blissett’s exhibition, Life in Deep Time. The publication features a commissioned essay by Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, Jennifer Scott, ‘The Invisible, Visible Other-World of Sholto Blissett’, selected poems by British poet Alice Oswald, as well as an interview between Blissett and curator Charlie Mills.

Page Count: 80 p.p.
Size: 210x260mm
Print Method: Offset Litho CMYK + Pantone green on coated and uncoated papers.
Cover: Offset Litho on recycled blue coloured stock. Pantone black and silver with gloss blue hotfoil detail.
Bind Method: Swiss style open spine
ISBN: 978-1-7392095-7-5
Edition: 300
Published: 1st Edition January 2025