ADAM BARKER-MILL - Model for Ahlen

Bartha Contemporary is delighted to announce an exhibition entitled “Model for Ahlen” featuring a single new work by Adam Barker-Mill. The exhibition coincides with the gallery’s fifth anniversary at its current Margaret Street location in Fitzrovia. As the title “Model for Ahlen” indicates the work is a study for a public commission in the German City of Ahlen and will be on view 24h a day experienced from the street. The presentation will continue until February 11th

Adam Barker-Mill’s (b. 1940 Somerset, lives and works in London & Southampton) works examine the physical and experimental properties of light, an interest, which originated from his childhood fascination with the caves located near his home in Somerset. His latest installation revisit the artist’s concern for colour in light, an element with which Barker-Mill began working on in the sixties.
 
Deceptively simplistic in appearance, this installation allows the viewer to maintain an idealistic visual, acutely unaware of the carefully structured designs, which generate, manipulate and modulate light. In effect turning the gallery space and its window facing the street into a large projection screen.

The work appears to be in a constant state of transition, as the sequentially arranged and looped coloured light sequence shift from colour-space to colour-space. Devoid of any literal meaning, beginning or end the installation remains suspended in a heightened state of awareness, inviting the passing audience to briefly remove themselves from the urban reality they occupy. 

This exhibition is a precursor to an installation of a permanent outdoor version of this work in the German City of Ahlen. Here the work will occupy a newly created public-space in-front of the Kunstmuseum Ahlen. The presentation of this new permanent work later this year will coincide with the artists solo-exhibition at the Museum.