FORMAL CONCERNS

Alan Rankle’s work focuses on the development of landscape art as a concept related to changes in
attitude towards the environment.  He has produced a several significant suites of paintings (Formal
Concerns, Further Tales from the Beach House, Gates to the Garden, Running from the House,
Wilderness Approaching, Pastoral Collateral, and Mothland) in which his preoccupation with
revitalising the tradition of landscape art within the context of our post-industrial world is developed.
In these recent canvases, he treats the whole history of landscape painting as a ‘found object’.  Aspects
of classical/romantic painting are fused with abstract expressionistic gestures; trompe l’oeil elements
are painted as though from a 19th century naturalist’s journal. Knowingly referenced conceptual asides
provide an undercurrent of contemporary unease.  These elements collide, as in a montage, depicting a
world splintering and fragmenting towards chaos, whilst simultaneously evoking an eerie illusion of
harmony.

As with much of Rankle’s work this series has a multi-layered aspect. For example, as he explains, the
title Formal Concerns refers to the way abstract artists of the 1970s, at the time when Rankle was a
student, would distance their work from an involvement with ordinary life and political issues by using
the term to describe their aims. It also refers to the belated pronouncement by the british government’s
Chief Scientist who expressed “formal concerns” on the subject of global warming. Further to this, the
title could be considered in the light of Rankle’s interest in the formal structures within the classical
and modernist paintings he emulates.

Individual painting titles: Hybrid; Landscape with Electrostatic; Fælledparken: Ice Shelf; Picturesque:
Industrial Memoir of the Earth & Air; and Bargain Buddha at Chadderton Asda; add to an informed
reading of these works.

Since 2010 Rankle has worked in collaboration with the multi-media artist and musician Kirsten
Reynolds on an ongoing series of exhibitions and installations. As Rankle & Reynolds they have
developed a sophisticated and diverse range of techniques to create a significant catalogue of important
and thought-provoking paintings and prints.

Claudia Arnold Ziegeler