Synopsis

Ian Davenport’s 48 metre-long painting Poured Lines transforms the tunnel beneath a railway bridge in Southwark, close to Tate Modern. The painting’s numerous vitreous enamel panels were created in a German factory where they were baked at fearsomely high temperatures. This film follows the artist as he creates this remarkable public artwork.

Like all of Ian Davenport’s work, Poured Lines rigorously explores the qualities and possibilities of paint but is at the same time a joyful and exuberant composition. It also responds to the city around it, enhancing the colours and movements of a busy road.

Ian Davenport showed in the near-legendary “Freeze” exhibition, organised by Damien Hirst, in 1988 and he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1991. But as his paintings have evolved over two decades, his central concerns of colour and abstraction, experiment and the everyday, have remained strikingly consistent. Poured Lines exemplifies the simple delight of his very best work.

theEYE is an excellent introduction to contemporary artists and their works and provides an ideal resource for a wide range of audiences, including galleries, museums and colleges, as well as individual art-lover.