Darren Almond

Panchen Lama

2008

Darren Almond was born in 1971 in Wigan, England. He graduated from Winchester School of Art in 1993 with a BA (hons) in Fine Arts. He works across sculpture, film, and photography, using these media to explore the effects of time on the individual and to draw out the symbolic and emotional potential of objects, places, and situations, creating work with both universal and personal resonance. His first solo exhibition, in London in 1995, featured KN120, a large ceiling fan installed under the Westway and wired to his studio. That same year, A Real Time Piece offered a live video link to his empty studio, where an industrial flip-clock amplified the passing of each minute. He also created cast-aluminium nameplates imitating British inter-city train plaques, and the film Schwebebahn, an unedited journey along Wuppertal's Sky Train. Since 1998, his Fullmoon series has used long exposures on full-moon nights to photograph landscapes associated with traditional painters, such as Cézanne's Mount Saint Victoire, later expanding to remote sites worldwide. Six Months Later (1999) repeatedly photographed his studio at precise times, capturing subtle changes in light. Meantime (2000) turned a shipping container into a digital clock filmed crossing the Atlantic, while Mine (2001) documented miners in Kazakhstan. His Infinite Betweens photographs and film In the Between examine Tibetan landscapes, prayer flags, and Buddhist concepts of time and transition, themes continued in Sometimes Still (2010).