Pylons at Aust

Due to its contrasting nature, Aust, a small village in South Gloucestershire, served as an ideal location for Morris to create this landscape painting, 'Pylons at Aust'. Although the surrounding areas are mostly farmlands, Aust is also part of the longest powerline spans in the United Kingdom. Therefore, a completely bucolic setting is transformed into one of incompatible discourses— the juxtaposition of rural modernity. Through his artistic practice, Morris frequently addressed the consequences that industrialisation had on the character and shape of British landscapes, and 'Pylons at Aust' serves as a prime example (refer back to 'Loughor from Penclawdd', 2017.038). T.W. Earp noted that Morris’s landscapes, ‘are marked by a peculiarly intimate feeling for nature… with a very personal strain of poetry.’(1) In 'Pylons at Aust', a cottage, which clings to a rolling hillside, is bracketed by two tall power towers with pylon lines of high-voltage stretching across a darkening sky. Morris’s ‘personal strain of poetry’ in this painting is found within the duality of industry encroaching on a pastoral setting. 1. T.W. Earp, “Cedric Morris as Portrait Painter: Pattern and Psychology”, 'The Morning Post' (24 March 1938), n.p.

Presented by Maggi Hambling and Robert Davey, trustees of the artist's estate, 2017