A NEW exhibition of Jersey architecture presents a combination of the recognisable, the remembered and the recreated.
Danny Romeril, son of landscape artist Nicholas Romeril, is showing a collection of work from the last two years.
The artist, a graduate of Central Saint Martins, is now based in Margate but he grew up in Jersey, visits the Island regularly and also prizes in his studio a copy of Joan Stevens’ celebrated book on old Jersey houses. All three turn out to be strong influences on A Bétôt – Expressions of a Wish, which opened on 7 June at Private & Public in Phillips Street.
There are images of buildings such as the Opera House and Mont Orgueil Castle that are unmistakable but others, including a painting of the streetscape of Hue Street, offer buildings most of which no longer exist, while some imagined buildings that have no existence beyond a place in the mind of the artist.
As Mr Romeril puts it in the accompanying catalogue: “I want to make paintings that reflect a lived experience of a place, not a literal representation of it.”
Gallery director Chris Clifford said: “It started when we went for dinner at Banjo after an exhibition. We went out onto the steps and stood there, and I pointed to a very beautiful piece of Regency architecture with pediment, columns and windows. You look up in St Helier and there are some cracking pieces of architecture and we started to talk about it.
“Artists in Jersey tend to stand on the beach and look out to sea, and no one turns their back on the coastline and looks in to the Island at its buildings. People don’t make work about them.”
Having already been attracted to buildings as a subject for his work, Mr Romeril found that the conversation provided the stimulus to explore some of those buildings. Now he says they have become something of an obsession, from typical arches and cider presses to structures which are much more recent.
Some are produced from other paintings or photographs, some exist entirely in the memory, while a third group occupy a place in the subconscious that mixes the two.
“A lot are imagined versions of things I’ve seen. It’s all about having a familiarity about it but then it’s anywhere and it’s nowhere. I like working in that inbetween space,” Mr Romeril explained.
A Bétôt is open until 28 June from 12pm to 6pm weekdays and from 10am to 2pm on Saturdays.
