Press Release Khosro Adibi: Transcending Time and Place

Iranian born artist Khosro Adibi unknowingly makes connections to British history both modern and ancient with ‘Falling Leaves’ installation and carved stone ring marks in wild Northumberland.

Exposed to the Northumberland weather, landscape art can be fleeting.  However two recent pieces by multi-disciplinary VARC artist in residence, Khosro Adibi are going to be long-lived whilst also referencing the past in different ways.

His meticulously executed installation ‘Falling Leaves’, remains as striking as when it was first created. The piece is made up of thousands of leaves threaded and suspended in an old stable at Highgreen. The architecture of the space is transformed into a passage and room with ‘walls’ of hanging leaves.  The intimate space that has been created awakens and activates different sensations in the viewer. As you walk through it, the breeze gently moves the leaves and the light catches the array of colours from bright yellow to rusty orange. A quiet, contemplative piece of work it was unknowingly given the same title as the World War I poem by Margaret Postgate-Cole ‘The Falling Leaves’ written in 1915, poignant as it coincides with the First World War Centenary, something that has resonated with several of the visitors to date.

“Repetition is at the core of most of my work. Ordinary materials or actions in time are transformed to create a form. Somehow it feels like all existence is in one or other way related to repetition and cycles.

The act of repeating inspires me as well as the desire to understand the material: its potential and limitations.  It’s as if I enter into a meditative state where time is suspended and the mind drifts away to another place while the hands are thinking and doing.  I rarely intellectually understand how I arrive to a piece of work.”  Khosro Adibi, 2015

Using chisels and a grinder, Khosro has now set about carving directly into the sandstone out on the fells around Highgreen. The first of the formations, a circular groove called ‘Earth’s Memory’, is reminiscent of the pre-historic cup and ring marks that can be found in  Northumberland. Other forms such as ‘Jupiter’ are concave shapes that are carved to expose the true nature of the stone itself.  These pieces, carved as they are into the moor’s stony outcrops are, like the cup and ring marks of the past, going to be with us for many generations to come.

A self-confessed workaholic, since his arrival Khosro has also been uploading a photograph each day to his blog, creating a visual diary of his time at Highgreen. Alongside his own work he is devising projects with Crossings (a Newcastle based charity where asylum seekers and refugees can meet and play music together), Crisis (a charity for homeless people).  The initial ideas involve costume and dance, another of Khosro’s passions.

Khosro’s end of residency exhibition will open at Highgreen on Sat 8th August 2015.

ENDS