A Light Left On

A LIGHT LEFT ON is a painterly installation created on site for The Foundry Gallery. Acting as a satellite space from her Kent studio she has dressed the gallery space like a film or theatre set with furniture and plants that reference ‘home’. These chosen elements from her personal history have been interwoven into a layered painterly environment which we are tempted into.

A LIGHT LEFT ON hovers in the gaps between painting and installation whilst exploring the theatrical nature of painting itself.  “We live our lives in domestic spaces, I want to disrupt the spatial qualities found in paintings and to investigate the psychology and subject of enduring domesticity.”  A large canvas has been lent against the wall; paintings spill out from the frame onto the opposite wall, their ephemeral gestural marks add to the painterly environment. Two free-standing mirrors have been positioned at angles to each other operating as visual devices, creating multiple perspectives that reflect the painted surfaces and our image onto one another. “Their free-standing nature allows paintings to become spatially present, prompting the viewer to interact physically with the work.” 

A LIGHT LEFT ON is the title of a poem by May Sarton in which a couple return to their shared domestic space to find the light left on, finding themselves reintroduced to their familiar and intensely intimate space. (Extract from A Light Left On)

“In the evening we came back
Into our yellow room,
For a moment taken aback
To find the light left on,” [4]

­Eleanor wants us the viewer to feel invited into an intimate space of her making and for a moment be taken aback by what we encounter. “When you opened the door, you found yourself in the midst of an entire environment.”

The Foundry Gallery’s unique position between a commercial gallery and a project space gives artists the opportunity to take risks and define/redefine their practice. This opportunity has given Eleanor the freedom to build on her artistic curiosity. Figures are mostly absent in her work but for this painterly installation she has experimented with adding her reflection, capturing herself working in the space she has created. Eleanor’s mark making, leaves space for suggestion. There are elements of ambiguity where parts of the artworks are intricately detailed, whilst other parts remain blank or are in shadow.  The paint that she has used for this installation is more viscous than the fluid nature of the paint and ink she has been using of late, highlighting how her relationship to her materials is continually evolving. Eleanor states that A LIGHT LEFT ON is not a performance artwork but instead a backdrop, a set to work in and explore her relationship with the three-dimensionality of paint and painting.

Feeling at Home is a complex emotion. In A LIGHT LEFT ON, Eleanor has successfully created a semblance of the familiar and the domestic through her choice of objects and the portrayal of her constructed space through paint and painting. A LIGHT LEFT ON has laid bare Eleanor’s latest artworks and ideas to new interpretations, influences, and connections. Instead of the literal depiction of objects relating to ideas around the subject of ‘Home’, it is Eleanor’s invitation to us. To have both a visceral and an intellectual experience, to find ourselves interwoven in her two and three-dimensional painterly environment where we find the light left on.