Darren Almond

Darren Almond’s diverse work, incorporating film, installation, sculpture and photography, deals with evocative meditations on time and duration as well as the themes of personal and historical memory.

Almond is interested in the notions of geographical limits and the means of getting there – in particular, culturally specific points of arrival and departure. Since 1998, Almond began his ongoing series of landscape photographs entitled Fifteen Minute Moons. Taken during a full moon with an exposure time of 15 minutes, these images of outstanding geographical beauty appear ghostly, bathed in an unexpectedly brilliant light where night seems to have been turned into day. In Schacta, Almond filmed the activities of a Russian tin mine and set them against a haunting soundtrack – made as a field recording – of a local female musician/shaman during her performance. Other works explore themes closer to home: Traction is an ambitious three-screen projection that draws a portrait of the artist’s father, laying bare external and internal scars, whilst revealing the artist’s preoccupation with time. A similar intimacy is evoked in If I Had You, a multi-screened film installation about the artist’s grandmother – a tender portrait of youthful reminiscence and the dignity of old age. In Terminus, Almond negotiated buying back the original bus shelters of the town of Oswiecim (formerly Auschwitz) to make a moving installation about historical loss.

Darren Almond was born in 1971 in Wigan, UK. He lives and works in London. He has participated in numerous important group exhibitions including ‘Sensation’ (1997-1999), Berlin Biennale (2001), Venice Biennale (2003), The Busan Biennale (2004) and The Turner Prize, Tate Britain (2005). Solo exhibitions include The Renaissance Society, Chicago (1999), Kunsthalle Zürich (2001), Tate Britain (2001) and K21, Düsseldorf (2005).