In Conversation with Kingsley Ifill about his captivating show at Hannah Barry Gallery

This month, LVH Art spoke with Kingsley Ifill about his multidisciplinary practice and his current exhibition at Hannah Barry Gallery, on view until May 17th. The show, titled Blue Roan carries a quiet intensity and intimate atmosphere, offering a diaristic quality that invites viewers to imagine fictional narratives— while also connecting the images to personal memory, emotion, and mortality. It’s one of the most compelling gallery shows on in London at the moment.

In the show Kingsley Ifill brings together images of snakes, birds, sleep, movement, and ritual—some screen-printed in acrylic onto raw surfaces, and others platinum palladium prints on handmade Japanese Washi paper, framed in intricately carved wooden frames.

The title, Blue Roan, comes from Romany slang, passed down from Ifill’s grandfather. It speaks to the blending of two distinct things into one. As Ifill puts it: “Non place as place. A name for the nameless. Neither here, nor there, but somewhere.” The exhibition becomes a meditation on that in-between space—a celebration of photography as both image and object, and a test of how far that object can be pushed.

Photography lies at the core of Ifill’s practice. Working primarily in 35mm—a habit that began with a disposable supermarket camera in his teens—he embraces the medium as a way to preserve memory and craft visual poetry

LVH Art: Are there recurring themes that you find yourself exploring in your work?

Kingsley Ifill: If there are, it’s not conscious. I like to imagine that I’m constantly moving and picking up the pieces as I go along, but whether the direction is in a straight line or an endless circle, I’m not sure. My focus is on putting one foot in front of the other and with enough walking, the path will become worn.  

LVH Art: In your current exhibition ‘Blue Roan’ at Hannah Barry Gallery, some recurring subjects are snakes, cropped nudes, and figures on horseback. What draws you to these specific visuals?

Kingsley Ifill: My studio in Kent is right next to the sea. Often when looking out at the landscape from the shore over the vast desert of water, I find myself experiencing a great level of comfort in acknowledging that the sight which I’m witnessing in that moment, is similar to the exact sight other living beings would of seen, for as long as we’ve been here and looking. A timeless beauty. I get the same satisfaction from each subject which you have mentioned. Bare skin, rattling snakes, horses pushing against the current. Each image has a story, or provides a clue and I’m confident that one day it will all add up to make sense.

LVH Art: On the ground floor of your exhibition at Hannah Barry Gallery, you presented a series of silkscreens—acrylic on canvas or linen. Can you talk us through your process for these works?

Kingsley Ifill: There’s a wide variety of processes involved. All of the works on show have existed within several different mediums or formats, before eventually finding their final resting place at this scale, printed with these methods. Through a journey almost purely based on instinct, until the image feels right. Which in some cases has taken over a decade to get from there to here. 

For example, a photo can initially be taken using a 35mm film camera, which I then process, print as a contact, make a silver gelatin print, reprint as silver gelatin using abstraction methods, tea tone, then Xerox the silver print, then risograph the zerox, then scan and crop, print as transparent, expose as a silkscreen. Repeat for several images and print using silkscreen on large stretched linen, combining several images as new “photography”. 

LVH Art: They’re not “perfect prints”—the ink often bleeds or soaks into the canvas. In Blue Roan (2015), for example, there are drips running down the canvas. What draws you to this effect?

Kingsley Ifill: I often feel like I’m a collaborator with the actual image or as if the image will do what it wants to do and my job is to simply keep my mind open to accept inspiration. I try not to rationalise. Or to put it even more clearly, the images and ideas are already there and I’m just a mediator. A bit like when Townes Van Zandt talked about how he wrote a song in his dream, woke up and started playing it. As if it had appeared from thin air. It’s the same with capturing the images in a camera too. All the images are there, you’ve just got to look and click the shutter. 

With Blue Roan, it’s technically a difficult image to print as the head of the horse is a deep back, with the dark river as the back ground. They blend into one. I spent days exposing different large 40×60” silkscreens and then even when they seemed crisp, it was still tough to work out the pressure and angel of the squeegee. I got the point where I’d almost given up. But through the failure and frustration, allowed a gap for chance, where I did certain things that I wouldn’t usually do. The drips came through attempting to thin out the paint from a failed print, which ultimately provided the base which I didn’t know I was searching for, until it appeared. To then built upon using silver paint and yet another silkscreen print. Completing the image. 

LVH Art: The exhibition shifts upstairs to featuring beautifully framed photographs. Can you talk about your selection process for these photographs, and what influenced your decision around the framing?

Kingsley Ifill: They’re photographs which I’ve taken over the last 15 years. Images I feel are strong enough to exist individually, without support from each other. Like single chapters from a book of short stories. 

The frames I carved myself by hand over different points in the last five years. The contrast of time between the two acts interests me. Some of the photographs would be been taken in a 1/1000th of a second, whereas the tree may have taken a couple of hundred years to grow before being cut and dried. And then a week or two of solid work to carve each one. The washi paper was produced using the same process in Japan, with water from the same river, that’s been used for over a thousand years. 

The platinum palladium prints, I made myself too. The process took me a long time to work out. Several years. And the archival properties of the print are 1000+ years, or supposedly forever. So essentially, although the image was brief moment, it could potentially live forever if placed in suitable conditions. 

LVH Art: Your work often plays with omission and the use of empty space. How do you approach composition, and think about absence and fragmentation?

Kingsley Ifill: There’s no right or wrong. And photography is more about what you crop, rather than what you include. I heard someone once say that poetry isn’t in the words, it’s in the space between the lines. Room for the mind and imagination. 

LVH Art: Have there been any artists, from the past or present, who have particularly inspired you or who you are thinking about a lot lately? What is it about their work that speaks to you?

Kingsley Ifill: Always. I’m forever thinking about Bruce Nauman. In particular with this show, I kept going back to his large scale installation, Room With My Soul Left Out. Room That Does Not Care, which was a big inspiration for my piece Chrysalis. Dekoonings early brushstrokes, which I saw in Venice last summer and how they drag themselves dry. Ad Reinhardt’s darker works and the way colours merge, floating into black and need to be experienced in person. Just like the subtle tones of platinum palladium.

LVH Art: Looking back, how has your practice evolved over the years? Are there any new mediums or themes you’re excited to explore in the future, or is there something in particular you’re excited about coming up?

Kingsley Ifill: It’s become more concentrated. For a while I was interested in finding or “taking” images, but now I’m only using my own photographs which I’ve taken using a camera. I’m excited to make the book for this show, which I’ll produce by hand in my studio. I’d like to carve more too, go up in scale. Same with the platinum palladium prints, to see how they translate bigger. No grand plans though. With each new work, I feel like I see more clearly. And that’s my main interest, seeing and feeling more.