Statement
My work is a direct response to the Moorland environment that I have been soaked in since childhood; the total immersion has heightened my awareness of the personal space we occupy as individuals.
Releasing me from the constraints of a static view point the vast space, the peat, the path and the challenging environment are gateways for my thoughts.
Right from the cave drawings of Lascaux to the land artists of the 20th century and on into the current century we have explored the relationship we have with our environment revealing how we shape our surroundings and in turn how it shapes us.
With an understanding of this but not subservient to it I attempt to pick up this line of continuity and along with a intuitive approach I paint, build, burn, rub, and scratch in order to align myself with all its creative possibilities.
My use of self produced mediums such as charcoal, lime wash, beewax and beeswax oil crayons further galvanises action and thought and in turn raises its own questions about process and its relevance/importance to the artists responses.
Solo exhibitions/commissions
-Keele University
-New Vic Theatre
-Vagabond Fires "Thats how it Begins" CD artwork 2017
-Vagabond Fires "Songs of The Wilderness" CD artwork 2018
-New Vic Theatre 2022 "Seeds"
Group exhibitions /Event
-prior 2007 Box Delights/ Englands Gallery London
-2007 Delicate Situations/Online exhibition/ http://delicatesituations.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/u...
-2007 Headtalk/forum/co-creator/Stoke-on-Trent
-2007 Headtalk/forum/co-creator/Stoke-on-Trent
-Play/AirSpace, Stoke-on-Trent -Pecha Kucha Night/FatCat Cafe and Bar/Co-organiser/Performer/Stoke-on-Trent 2009
-Inter?ogation/Walsall New Art Gallery/Sept 2009 Collaborative with artist Bernard Charnley.
-Marina Abramovich/participant /Whitworth Gallery/Manchester/2009
-AntiFreeze/Manchester/2009
-Aftermath/AirSpace studio artists/Leek Institute, Leek/2009
Common Ground/AirSpace public art exhibition/Hanley Park Stoke-on-Trent/June 2010
-Airvent/AirSpace Gallery/Stoke-on-Trent/2011
-Slideshow/AirSpace Gallery/Stoke-on-Trent/2011
-Kiss Me Quick/Harbour Arm Gallery/Margate/2011
-Buxton Museum and Art Gallery 2019 "The Chrome Hill Project"
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Statement to: 'The Chrome Hill Project' Exhibition, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery...
Artists Statement:
Brian Holdcroft:
Chrome Hill and the surrounding area revealed itself to be a palimpsest of interventions where traces of the Carboniferous period were overlaid with natural changes and the much later human activity.
I considered the ongoing change, the constant movement, nature’s turning over of material like that of a plough.
Lime, lead and earth were used and along with bees wax, ink and earth pigments, three strands of work started to develop: Mapping, Growth and Erosion.
Working direct from that around me I responded intuitively, metaphorically and physically to climb its heights and enter its caverns and caves following its rills, creases and folds to map its makeup.
Within the hills of Chrome hill and Parkhouse hill the body is pressed on all sides to register on the senses a kind of negative. From this pressed engagement the Growth Series emerged.
The Erosion series takes the heavy bruised paper and fugitive marks to form another response to the changing escarpment and our relationship with it.
Change was also the focus for the buried books which began as standard work books before being buried. The time spent in the earth changed their condition as they took on the state of objecthood; locking time inside them like that of the many lime stone reef fossils found in the surrounding hills.
Finally the lead bowl response was a reworking process to follow the lead veins where the shallow ore lies along with the minerals that have been exploited in and around this area over time.
Formulating an idea of oneself within this environment the work overall aims to convey that we are not separate from our surroundings but simply a contributing dynamic to the whole.
Statement to "Seeds"
"Seeds" was an embryonic thought that tentatively took root in a group of work I titled “Erosion Series”
Following on from a sustained 12 month period working in and around Chrome Hill in the Peak District Derbyshire “Seeds” grew on through time spent within the moorland environment.
The sentiment underlying the thought is one of renewal.
However this is checked by the struggle.
A precarious balance between certainty and uncertainty between coming and going prevails.
In the development of the work, self produced mediums are used. Elements have been brought together to create a whole but how long they can hold together is unknown. The ground is unstable and organic and its fragility and its vulnerability are not hidden.
Rather than a search for permanency the work is intended to celebrate transience:
Finding myself inside all these elements within the moorland, suggests a oneness, a part of a living world in a constant state of becoming.
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MY MOORLAND
Closer to the heart
is to note
All I rememberA vast lump
to be
Uncultivatable and beautiful
Free
The other moorland
My moorland
DAWN ON AN OLD MOOR
Veneered with ice
through trodden heather
a chillier foot
formed
So tremulous on crystalline surface
rest our Ancestors eyes
straggling the distance
shaping shadows
Then threading along a
needle skyline
rippled light ran
gentle and coquettish
a new beginning
On An Old Moor
On early morning
On an Old Moor
where a group of hoar haired trees sit
A Mistle Thrush lifted its stature
Suddenly loosening its hold from
It’s fragile support
Falling into a vast unknown
It’s wings seeking invisible forces
It crossed my vision
Flashing its specked shield
With an offer of strength.... to take
Time shifted enough to hold it
Before once again all is released into the vast unknown.
Stirring Under a Stickleback Sky
Stirring under a stickleback sky
Within the circle of a compressed compass
Lumps of earth turn
Weighted by the force of physics
Each time to an unfamiliar tread
Turning and turning
The perpendicular just temporarily grafted on
Fills an evolving symmetry with sound
A layered fiction unfolds
Opening up to its natural conclusion