EARTHLY SPHERES AND RELATED WORKS 1998 -2022

EARTHLY SPHERES, 4000 spheres of earth, 1998-2020, installation at caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020

ESFERAS TERRESTRES

Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001

ESFERAS TERRESTRES

EARTHLY SPHERES. Four thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Warehouse Artists’ Studios, Norwich, UK, 1998; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK, 1999; The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK, 2001; Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020

SIERRA CABRERA

11 earths from Sierra Cabrera region, Almeria, Spain.

1996 edition of 3

4000 EARTHS

40 paintings Mud on paper on canvas,

25 x 25 cm. 2020 - 2022

TOUCHING EARTH

40 pages. Mud on paper,

19 x 19 cm. 2020-2022

Bookwork 21 x 21 cm, 46 pages 2023

SIERRA CABRERA PAINTINGS

Mud on paper on canvas, 30 x 30 cm. 2019

÷9 Earth on paper,

440 paintings 10 x 10 cm. 2020 -2022

EDITIONS / PRINT

CEM TERRAS Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag

72 X 72cm, 2022

3000 TERRAS

Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 110 x 93 cm, 2022

Touched 4000 times

Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 128 x 80 cm, 2022

4000 EARTHS

Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 86 x 136 cm, 2022

1998 EARTHS, Earth on paper on canvas,

100 x 150 cm, 2020

2000 EARTHS Earth on paper on canvas,

100 x 150 cm, 2022

4000 FINGERPRINTS Earth on paper on canvas,

100 x 150 cm, 2022

LARGE PAINTINGS

3000 SQUARES Work in progress Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Photographs by Eduardo Aigner

Nick Rands, b. 1955 Chester, UK.

Studied Fine Art at Reading University and Art Education at Bristol University/Bristol Polytechnic.

Taught art in UK and Botswana before working as art-gallery education officer. In 1992 he was Southern Arts-Brazil Exchange artist to Porto Alegre, Brazil. Moved to Brazil in 1998, and in 2016 moved to Caunes-Minervois, France.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022

3000 e outras terras

Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS Brazil

Line by Line Peintures / Dessins 1992 - 2022

La Table des Vignerons, Trausse, France

Rue Joseph Sicard, Caunes Minervois, France

Ausência

L’anciennne boulangerie, Caunes Minervois, France

Hillfield/Arborizada

Rue Joseph Sicard, Caunes Minervois, France

2021

Dix terres a la recheche d’un système perdu

Rue Joseph Sicard, Caunes Minervois, France

Greencat gallery, Caunes Minervois, France

2018

Lost Rivers Mosaic Paintings

8 Melior Street, London, UK

Horizontes Terrestres revisited

Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil

2017

Horizontes Terrestres

ESPM, Porto Alegre, Brazil

2016

Ausência

Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil

2015

Neckinger River Levels

Bermondsey Yard, London

2012

Um Quadrado no Rio Grande do Sul

Museu Júlio de Castilhos, Porto Alegre, Brazil

2011

Um Quadrado no Rio Grande do Sul

Museu de Arte de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Brazil

A Gente

Museu do Trabalho, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil

2009

ChromaLife

Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil

2008

ChromaLife

The Brick House, Brick Lane, London

2007

Obras Fotográficas

Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil

2005

…and still counting…

Bermondsey Street Studio, London

Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil

2004

Painting by Numbers

Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil

2003

Where the sea meets the sky

Fotogaleria, Porto Alegre Brazil

2001

Mud Works

Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto, Rio de Janeiro, RJ Brazil

Fundação Cultural de Criciuma, Criciuma SC Brazil

Pinturas

Fundação Cultural de Curitiba, PR Brazil

Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana, Porto Alegre RS. Brazil

Earthly Spheres

The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK

2000

Pinturas

Pinacoteca da Feevale, Novo Hamburgo, RS, Brazil

Eye Levels

Galeria Iberê Camargo, Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre,

1999

Esferas Terrestres

Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil

1998

Earthly spheres

Warehouse, Norwich, UK

Watching the waves/Sowing the seed

Windsor Arts Centre Windsor, UK

1996

Grizedale Forest Painting residency

Gallery in The Forest, Grizedale, UK

Line by Line

Evreham Iver, Bucks, UK

1995

Line by Line

Isambard Brunel School. Portsmouth, UK

1994

Line by Line

The Peveril Centre. Eastleigh, UK

Atrium Gallery. Bournemouth University UK

Windrush Leisure Centre, Witney Oxon, UK

Bridgemary Community School, Gosport, UK

South Hill Park Arts Centre. Bracknell, UK

1992

Staying in Line

Bedales Gallery, Petersfield, UK

Upstairs Gallery, Upton Park. Dorset, UK

Instituto de Artes UFRGS Porto Alegre, R.S. Brazil

1982

Photographic Pieces/Timed Activities

Axiom Centre, Cheltenham, UK

GROUP SHOWS

2022

Haverá consequências

Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Viamão-RS Brazil

Digital graffiti 2022

Alys Beach, Florida USA

2020

du neuf à Caunes

Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, France

2019

Ailleurs

La Tuilerie Saint Joseph, La Livinière, France

2017

Paintings from somewhere else

Youngblood, Cape Town, South Africa

2016

Digital Graffiti 2016

Alys Beach, Florida USA

2015

Ocupando Lucas 21

Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS Brazil

2013

Magmart | international videoart festival

Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy

Digital Graffiti 2013

Alys Beach, Florida USA

7 Billionth Citizen

Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt

Solent Showcase Gallery, Southampton, UK

Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

Mamute Galeria, Porto Alegre, Brazil

2012

Des | Estruturas

Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Viamão, Brazil

2011

8th Mercosul Biennial

Porto Alegre/RS Brazil

2010

Digital Graffiti

Alys Beach, Florida USA

DIGIT 2010

Narrowsburg, New York, USA

Silêncios e Sussuros

Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Viamão, Brazil

2006

Um olhar fotográfico

Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos, Porto Alegre, Brazil

2004

Heterodoxia

MASC Florianópolis – SC Brazil

1+1+1

Museu da Gravura, Bagé, RS Brazil

2003

1+1+1

Galeria Gestual, Porto Alegre RS Brazil

Um território da fotografia

Galeria dos Arcos, Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre,

III Salão National de Arte de Goiás

Goiania, GO Brazil

24º Salão de Arte de Riberão Preto

Riberão Preto, SP Brazil

2002

III Salão de Porto Alegre

Usina do Gasômetro Porto Alegre RS Brazil

II Salão National de Arte de Goiás

Goiania, GO Brazil

II Salão de Arte

UNI-BH, Belo Horizonte, MG Brazil

Forest

The Southern Arts Touring Exhibition Service, UK

2000

Bah-zart

Obra Aberta Porto Alegre RS Brazil

II Salão de Porto Alegre

Usina do Gasômetro, Porto Alegre

1999

Chart

Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK.

Coletiva

Obra Aberta, Galeria Chaves, Porto Alegre

1998

Sticks

The Southern Arts Touring Exhibition Service, UK.

1997

The Space of the Page

Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK.

1996-7

Repetition

Corn Exchange Newbury, UK

Winchester Gallery, UK

The Gantry, Southampton UK

Milton Keynes Crafts Guild UK

Artsway, UK

Nuova Icona, Venice, Italy

Cacco Zanchi, Aalst, Belgium

1995

Words

Aspex Gallery Portsmouth, UK

Artspace

Square Tower Portsmouth, UK

1994

Art Kites

Milton Keynes Kite Festival. Milton Keynes, UK

1993

On Paper

Contact Gallery, Norwich, UK

Repetere

Solar dos Camara, Porto Alegre RS Brazil

1992

East End Open Studios

Deborah House, Hackney, London, UK

1990

Artists in Botswana

National Gallery of Botswana. Gaborone, Botswana

1984

R.W.A. Annual Exhibition,

Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK

1982

Group Photography 2

Axiom Centre, Cheltenham, UK

1978

Wessex Artists

Southampton City Art Gallery, UK

PHOTO: EDUARDO AIGNER

A simple act. Breathing is often considered a simple act, because for most it takes no thought. The simple act of creating a partial vacuum inside the body, drawing in gases, enabling molecules to pass through membranes, expelling gases; the mechanisms of our very survival. Few acts, it seems, are simple, devoid of implication, associated meaning, inner workings.

I have bought some land. A complicated act. That is, when it is paid for, I will have a share in the land on which the house I live in stands. And how far down does my land go? Someone will know the strict legalities of the matter, but I choose to imagine my property reaches to the fiery core. I am the landlord of an inverted pyramid, my share of the sphere, its molten apex targeted on Australasia.

Land ownership is a process of succession, a cascading performance spanning generations. The succession begins with the staking of a claim and progresses when minds and plans change, or the simple act of breathing falters. Individual ownership seems complicated, but it is truly a simple act of self-deception. We cling to the spinning sphere, pretending it is ours; we walk its surface, scratch its crust, ponder its frightening origins. We measure the sphere with our bodies, and we measure the term of our bodily existence, of our ownership, by the movement of the sphere.

Before Nick Rands went to live in Brazil I wrote of the mud balls he had made that each was “an autographic mark of sorts, a unique object, a hand print in the round, but smoothed off by those hands to look as regular and as much like its fellows as possible.”

That text continues: “In the works of recent years, the same hands have smeared mud to map the movements of the artist’s windmilling arms on a surface. The areas thus described are then filled in by the repetitive accretion of lines made with parallel, echoing movements of a brush. These works, on canvas, on paper, or on the wall, take the simplest materials in their rawest form and harness the body’s natural geometry to create images which refer to nothing more than bodily rhythms and the daily round. They are as light in their effect as they are pure in their means, thanks to the spaces in between the lines, whose dimensions are determined by theuncontrived measurement of the eye, hand and fingers as they do their work. The mud balls represent an even simpler use of raw materials, mud as mud, and their form is a similarly straightforward expression of the hands that make them. In their spacing for the installation the same natural measurement is at work, resulting again in a lightness in the background grid which records the rhythm of production and deployment.”

It was clear to me that in Earthly Spheres, the artist had succeeded better than most in his quest for a simple act. “Most actions,” I wrote, “find their rhythm between the revolutions of the globe and the pumping of the human heart. We have a fundamental, devotional need to answer the call of such resonances: we make things; we exchange things; we collect things; we record things; we lift our voices in song. On a production line, in a workshop or office, work answers the call to rhythm, perhaps more than play.”

Now the artist is far away and the issues seem more complicated. The simple act has been carried out here and there, and the locations for it are linked by the fact as surely as those which were the sources of the materials used. The earth is scooped up, possessed, a claim staked. The number of spheres grows, and the slow evaporation of moisture from the mud becomes somehow analogous to the cooling of the core beneath the mantle. This sphere is comfortingly small, one amongst many. While my friend has bought land out there, settled on it, his conical territory still meets mine at the centre, and above we tread the same crust.

Chart, Angel Row Gallery, 1999 ISBN 0 905634 38 1