Inspired by personal experiences and the cultural memories of different places, Darren Almond’s works are drawing on a wide set of references and ideas. In this far-ranging series of exchanges, Almond talks with art writer Martin Herbert, who has known him since the very beginning of his career. The artist illuminates the concepts behind his practice over thirty years, a body of work that is built on inventive approaches to media—photography, video, painting, sculpture, and more—and that explores the diverse effects of industrial modernity while locating examples of compensatory beauty. The conversations explore the fullness of Almond’s trajectory to date: from working-class roots in Northern England to all corners of the globe, including some of the planet’s most inhospitable places. With candor, thoughtfulness, and humor, Life Line reveals how Almond has continually pushed himself in new directions, and offers a wealth of personal insights into the making of art.

PAINTED MARKS
(excerpt from the conversation between Martin Herbert and Darren Almond)

Darren Almond: I’ve never enjoyed making my work, it’s always been a real struggle – climbing these mountains, carrying all this equipment, trying to get into a place, trying to resolve something, thinking you’re overstepping the mark. And of course you can say, well, if you think you’re enjoying it you could be making the worst work of your career. But I got to the stage where I was bolting out of bed at 5 a.m. because I wanted to try a little bit of thin green wash over in the corner of a painting, because that might take it somewhere where it needs to be. I was drawing, here, on all the experiences of making the Fullmoons, all the other experiences I’ve subjected myself to. And you learn when to be aware of what your subconscious has dished out in front of you, and not push it away but hold it, cherish it. Around this time, I had a bit of an emotional overload in front of Rothko’s work, just outside of Tokyo. I started to have a very emotional response to his colour, within the low-lighting drama he’d prescribed. There was a sudden rush of feeling that came out, after decades of not having that from works of art. And it was a real impetus to carry on and feel as though this is an engagement with life itself, with my existence; this is what it has been for me since that moment of saying goodbye to my granddad and having this portrait of him, this drawing – to have this emotional existence with works made by a human hand.

Martin Herbert: Maybe you can only make certain works at a certain point, and in retrospect everything you’ve done up to that point becomes the framework for it.

Darren Almond: Absolutely, it all funnels into that point. It’s all about those experiences of being out in the landscape which I was transferring into these paintings. It’s like Howard Hodgkin and his relationship to India and colour. As soon as he gives it a geographically specific title, it’s like, whoosh, you’re there. Because that’s playing with experiences that we share unequivocally without knowing we share them. The smell of colour. And that’s why, in the Hubble Space Telescope photos, we’ve had to resort to using colour to understand this apparent darkness, this eternity.

Martin Herbert: Given that your emphasis on the Anthropocene might lead a viewer to conclude that we’re doomed on this planet, what does it mean that your work has expanded of late to take in views that are off the planet?

Darren Almond: Everything’s transient, everything’s not meant to be everlasting, it’s just our ego that thinks we need to be. It’s just humblingly spectacular, the scale of everything and how little we are in comparison, and I think the more we think like that, the better we’d behave with each other. And it’s also about the relationships we do form with one another. Because we’re not going to leave the planet or solar system the way people imagine. Just in terms of distances and time, it’s not possible, unless we can distort time. Our time is up. But, without being fatalistic, there is an opportunity if you follow on from Darwin and his method of approach. If it wasn’t for this rock, by which I mean our planet the Earth, we wouldn’t be able to see into the far reaches of space and understand any of this. Because the shadow cast by the Earth itself is what illuminates our understanding, without it we are blinded, light is the giver of life but it can also blind our sense of existence.