Tony Lloyd: The Distance

Overview

New exhibition The Distance continues Tony Lloyd's fascination with cinematic imagery and its capacity to create anticipation and suspense. This series embraces the apocalyptic film genre (Lloyd is typically influenced by science fiction and film noir) and its heightened drama, with unsettling paintings of asteroids illuminated by car headlights mere moments before they hit earth.

"We are all travelling through space. Earth is our vehicle, the orbital path is our highway," Lloyd explains of these asteroid works. Driving at night is an inherently cinematic experience for Lloyd, who says watching an external landscape unfold out of the darkness always reminds him of being at the movies.

Despite the foreboding subject, there is also a quiet stillness and spooky level of beauty to the paintings, which place the viewer in the drivers seat, suspending them in what Lloyd describes as "the narrow instant before the distance between present and future is erased."

Image: Tony Lloyd, Near Earth asteroid with highway (Ida) (2017).