Night Blooms Angus Carlyle

Angus Carlyle’s Night Blooms collects nocturnal explorations of an area of woodland close to his home on the South Coast of England. Poetic prose and photographic experiments document Carlyle’s chosen medium of running, an everyday act he has repeated across specific trails in solitude for years. In Night Blooms, public space becomes unrecognised – trespassed underfoot and collected. We encounter the smells, noises, the presence of inhabitants; bats, a nightjar, laughter, concrete. A head torch provides a prism of vignetted light and acts as a portable studio, like a lantern to the understory of a secret yet shared space. Everyday objects take on a new status – shrine-like, sinister, glowing. The exhale of breath, bad weather, a deflated bouncy castle are seemingly snatched at pace from the air. If there is a constant character here, it is the blooms which remain more familiar, unwieldily and delicate. Night Blooms takes us up high – as territory, trails and terrain overlap and collide, re-assembled glimpses offer study caught in motion.

Part of the Hotel Archive

Collections: The British Library, Bodleian Library Oxford University, The Cambridge University Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales and Trinity College Dublin.

Angus Carlyle is interested in landscape and in other things besides. He works collaboratively and on his own. Publications include On Listening (co-edited with Cathy Lane), Autumn Leaves (as editor), A Downland Index and In The Shadow of the Silent Mountain.