Dan McDermott – The Lumiere Project
23 October 2013 § 1 Comment
I recently had the fortune to see the latest exhibition by Dan McDermott at High House Gallery. This is ‘an on-going project’ which he has been working on over the last couple of years alongside his admittedly more commercial works. These are offered through a number of galleries including Alon Zakaim Fine Art in Mayfair.
It has been described as: ‘an investigative journey consisting of paintings, photographs, prints and moving image, all based around one source, The Lumiere Brothers Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 1895. One of the earliest examples of cinema, this short film shows a train pulling into a station in France and people entering and alighting and lasts less than one minute. In The Lumière Project this seminal piece of film becomes a tool through which McDermott explores different notions of time and attempts to reveal a paradox with which we all live on a daily basis – the paradox of the present moment.’
After fifteen years as a professional artist, with an extensive cv of exhibitions and commissions already under his belt, Dan McDermott recently returned to part time education, completing an MA at City and Guild University in 2010. Inspired to re-visit his continually expanding archive of film, documentary and TV stills, each one emotionally resonant from their entrapment in the decades in which they were born and forgotten, McDermott identified his long term fascination with the present momentness of past events and embarked on an advanced level of creative inquiry.
The Lumière Project marks this significant point of change in the artist’s career. Prescribed by McDermott as an open ended project it consists of paintings, photographs, prints and moving image. This seminal piece of film becomes a tool through which the McDermott explores different notions of time and attempts to reveal a paradox with which we all live on a daily basis – the paradox of the present moment.
The true nature of the present is described by the French philosopher Henri Bergson as duration. The nature of the present is one of continuous change. It can be seen as pure becoming, which is to say that at every single instant it is outside of itself as it becomes the past. Got that?
Related articles
- World’s oldest cinema to open again (telegraph.co.uk)
- World’s oldest cinema to reopen (skynews.com.au)
- Eden regained: World’s oldest public cinema re-opens after restoration (theguardian.com)
- World’s oldest cinema to reopen on Wednesday (entertainment.inquirer.net)
- Early Cinema Shorts: Lumiere Brothers and Georges Melies (ufilmanalysisfall13.wordpress.com)
a kick up the arts 
Reblogged this on Henri van de Zee.