Events

Spanning photography, film, installation, painting and sculpture, Darren Almond’s practice explores ideas of time, space, history and memory, and how these interrelate. The artist unearths the symbolic and emotional potential of objects, places and situations, producing works charged with historical and personal resonance.

Almond’s ‘train plate’ series – comprising rectangular, cast aluminium panels which allude to the nameplates historically found on British trains – debuted in 1997, with a plate created for an Intercity 125 train bound from Paddington to Cornwall, which read ‘Darren James Almond’. As a young boy, the artist states he was ‘very much tied up with the notion of being a trainspotter’ – a tendency which manifests through the artist’s preoccupation with movement, travel and means of transportation. In this line of thought, curator Kate Bush says the train plates summon ‘every trainspotter’s wishful dream, the endless pleasures of speed and unknown place.’