As you may already know, Diemar/Noble Photography is proud to present Marcus Doyle's exhibition 'The House Martin and the Cinema' this week, opening on Thursday. The show is a retrospective look at his work over the last decade including photographs never displayed in the UK before. What you may not know are my personal thoughts on his work. I could wax lyrical for days about each and every image he has taken, but I will not. Instead I want to talk about one image in particular that really blew me away the first time I saw it.
As a painter Marcus and myself have had many conversations about colour. When I see a colour I like, my instant reaction is to mix the colour in my head as if it were paint on a palette. Marcus has a beautiful palette to work from, ie: nature, full of amazing shades and tones. The colours that come up in conversation most frequently are the following: prussian blue, Paynes grey, Naples yellow and viridian green. All favorites of mine. Then there is the blue, it's almost a Klein blue but not quite, it is a Doyle hue, the cinema is radiating it. The oh so quiet corridor curving towards the screen entrance out of view is punctuated by the white rail, that leads the eye into the the darkness. I can meditate on this image for hours. The colour appears like a layer of deep cobalt blue pigment, that is so dense I could sink my teeth into it. If something is good enough I always want to bite it, like testing a coin to see if it is real, there is a primal urge to do this with a great work of art. A random confession, but true all the same.
So rarely do we in our busy lives stop and meditate upon something or somewhere. For many standing in a gallery and contemplating a work of art is the closest we come to some kind of meditative state. This mental state is the beginning of further considerations about the wider experience of the world that we live in. There is nothing more satisfying than leaving a gallery with a head full of ideas that weren't there before entering it.
The Blue Cinema is more than a corridor, it is a space where thoughts and ideas can become miraculously projected into, to seek out in the darkness. The nervous excitement waiting to go in and see a film at the cinema is recaptured here with magical undertones. Not to mention the immense charm and simplicity of it all, so difficult to capture on film, so expertly done by Doyle. By choosing such a spot to photograph, the imagination is left to run riot down the blue corridor and beyond...
What is playing, or about to play could be anything, happy, sad, funny, poetic. It depends on how I am feeling each day. The image seems to suit every mood and just immersing myself in the colour is often enough...pause...look....be still...
Come and see the work in the flesh, this jpeg can never do it justice. Standing in front of the real thing is such a joy and see for yourself what the darkness illuminates in your own mind.
