Description

Place in Time: The Work of Tim Simmons, presents an overview of his recent photographic and video work. It is accompanied by essays from artists, writers and curators. The book surveys Simmons’s work in relation to contemporary issues in landscape and visual arts practice. Essays cover diverse topics from Simmons’s working processes to our attempts to measure time. Avoiding a traditional approach to landscape photography, Simmons is not interested in showing landscapes in their ‘natural’ state. Rather, he presents places enhanced or altered for his investigations and experiments.

Over time, Simmons’s work has shifted from an interest in revealing hidden places. Instead he turned to the hidden phenomena which affect our interpretation of place at specific times. He makes use of the tricks time plays with us: the dominance of light, the role of the sun and movement of the earth. His more performative works, such as Mirrors, reflect back light from the sun.  For One Mile, he set up flashing lights to relate to the earth’s movement, experimenting playfully with phenomena of light, shifting positions of the sun and reflections. Simmons uses the tools, not only those of production, but of the measurement of time and place, to accentuate the moment. He calculates the point of its greatest stillness, or encapsulates its minutest movement. He composes little scenes and episodes where in fact nothing happens except for the place itself”.  Veronica Sekules (p. 29)

Tim Simmons has shown his work several times at Groundwork, and is one of our selected artists. 

About the artist

Tim Simmons began developing his artistic practice in the late 1990s alongside his career as a commercial photographer. He gave up commercial photography in 2005 to concentrate on his art practice and in 2013 enrolled for an MA in Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts, graduating with Distinction in 2015. In 2015 he showed at Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Nottingham Contemporary and the ICA, London. Since then his work has been at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth; Oriel, Mostyn; Fermynwoods; Artsway, Hampshire; GroundWork, Kings Lynn; and Format, Derby. Internationally he has exhibited in the USA, Lithuania, Israel and South Korea. In 2016 he was Associate Artist at Fermynwoods Contemporary Art & Art Work Placement, connecting artists and businesses. Tim lives and works in Norfolk.