KEITH HOLMES
VENICE IS IN THE DETAIL

at The Millinery Works Gallery

Wednesday 7 until Sunday 25 September 2005 
Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 6pm, Sunday 12 to 5pm

For further information E Mail: art@millineryworks.co.uk

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Old and New 35.5 x 74cms (14 x 29)

I found this modern carved frame next to some beautiful old carving of the same design. The new looked so mean and mechanical beside the old.

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The Fall 52 x 33cms (20.5 x 13)

Throughout Venice one comes across fragments of the past, like the Byzantine cross here, that have been recycled into later building. The cross was set in crumbling plaster and I have shown some actually falling off - hence, in part, the title and an evocation of the decline of Venice. But the juxtaposition of a Byzantine cross and the postal number on the wall yielded an astonishing bounty. The number was 1458 - just five digits away from the date of the fall of Constantinople - Byzantium - to the Turks in 1453, which marked the beginning of Venice's decline. So I made the adjustment. So much of Venice's history is bound up in its relationship to Byzantium. At its grandest this is embodied in the cathedral of San Marco, but here finds a random echo in the street. 

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Light 46 x 58.5cms (18 x 23)

Dawn, electric and an old torch bracket the latter no longer functioning. Great shadows.

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Black in Red 42 x 82cms (16.5 x 32)

I found this fragment of graffiti on the wall of the Accademia, a religious institution before it became Venice's great art gallery. Hence the crosses and the slot, which was for the anonymous posting of denunciations. The red graffito reads nero, which is black in Italian.

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Concealed 41 x 82cms (16 x 32)

Blind corners of canals have convex mirrors so you can see what's coming. Here both reflect water and one a passing boat. A concealed garden lies behind the wall.

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Valentine 62 x 72cms (24.5 x 28.5)

A found graffito. I gave the painting as a valentine to Clare Colvin in 2005. 

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Hot Wired 61 x 41cms (24 x 16)

In typically Venetian fashion the cable here does not go straight to the hole in the wall but makes an apparently pointless angle. When I saw it the whole wall and the cable had been painted over in hot Venetian red - my chance to make a monochrome in this colour of the city.

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Red Yellow and Blue 23 x 23cms (9 x 9)

Confetti in the painter's primaries of red, yellow and blue made a striking composition with the triangle of marble patched into the pavement - a very typically Venetian repair.

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