Another approach to painting

The second instalment of PX is closer to the first than what might have been anticipated, but with a very different focus. Here Jan Bryant has looked at tropes of painting rather than materialities and their politics (which Emmerling did). Narrative themes like history, transport, excavation, conflict, and radiance, are presented as metaphors or similes.

You come into the AUT space off St. Paul St and first thing you notice is that the Katharina Grosse work from the first PX show is still in the foyer. It is an unfortunate distraction for all who enter the exhibition, as firstly it is falling to bits, and secondly it upsets the new conceptual flavour Bryant is trying to establish. It is probably there to please a sponsor - Grosse’s dealer perhaps.

Ignoring that and a couple of irritatingly unfunny, pea-brained works, like Sosnovskaia and Harris’ video of a hitch-hiker holding a ‘painted’ RUSSIA sign while trying to catch a lift in Birkenhead, there are some wonderful highlights here.

Patrick Lundberg’s excavation into the gallery wall through an Art Nouveau stencilled frame, looks at physical traces from the history of exhibitions in Gallery Two. In this very subtle work the exposed linear sections of ealier wall layers require close scrutiny to find the slivers of paint left from earlier shows. It would be great to see Lundberg try out this brilliant painting approach in a really old gallery, just to see what he discovers.

Whitney Bedford’s three works are rich in metaphorical resonances, one understated image of icebergs being particularly sensual and loose. Dil Hildebrand’s beautifully painted oil painting of reflections in the glass over an oil landscape looks at notions of infinite regress within receding frames, while Isobel Thom’s resurrected cubism features three well-worked, prismatic images of fruit in a bowl. (Each facet and polished line seems to radiate a glowing aura.)

Other works are interesting, but only vaguely so. The content of Michel Majerus’ huge text is banal (’What looks good today may not look good tomorrow’) but the bizarre seventies sci-fi font saves it. The rectangular, bumpy letters make entertaining viewing as they spread like Cinerama across the very wide wall.

Fiona MacDonald’s version of an enlarged Eva Hesse drawing inexplicably adds flock to the rectangle’s surface - making its soft blackness like the inner void of an Anish Kapoor sculpture. Its working notes set out a strict procedure that is not actually sustained in the work while prissy white frames distract from the muscular impact of the main canvas ‘drawing’. The meandering explanation destroys the credibility of the ‘recreation’ despite its tactile sensuality.

Six paired paintings by Colin Lawson feature small stretched canvases with small but thick brush marks of colour under delicate layers of very thin white paint. They seem to be under the canvas but they are not. These six quirky diptychs are unusual in their method, but ultimately they remain a sterile exercise. Saskia Leek’s pastel, sentimental paintings are similarly icy in tone, landscapes and cottages without substance (but lots of surface) in a deliberately shallow, flattened field.

Barbara Tuck makes paintings that look like maps made up of blended sections of tree foliage, but lusciously rendered in oil paint. Their space is ambiguous so you are disoriented and unsure whether the ground is above or below you – like the works of Australian artist William Robinson. Tuck is a skillful, innovative artist, but I prefer her shaped works of the nineties.

Richard Bryant’s hot hued paintings look like Don Driver collages recreated with the painting method of James Rosenquist. Torn sections of fashion magazines are copied with oil paint, creating masked off sections that have their edges slightly raised. The warm colourful forms interlock well but the works still seem transitional and unresolved.

The PX2 exhibition is about a state of hovering above the semantic content of the painted image. There is a sense of distant and remote detachment, for Bryant’s show is not frenetic, passionate or noisy like Emmerling’s. It is cool and contemplative: less formal but oddly more affectionate to the practice under examination.

One has to greatly admire St Paul St Gallery  for making such an energetic contribution to the discourse around this subject with this project. For the last section, Sam Rowntree-Williams has provided an excellent essay about two opposing traditions of painting practice and will draw out the issues further in the forum’s “Conversation” tomorrow evening.(Wed.3/10)

One final thought: it is intriguing that AUT is openly supportive of contemporary painting practice and its attendant debates, while Elam on the other hand, seems to be the opposite, in a covert fashion downright hostile. I have heard it expressed that Jim and Mary Barr’s collecting preference for sculpture over painting is reflected by certain Elam lecturers represented in the Barr Collection ensuring Elam is (unluckily for painting) cross-disciplinary in focus – not media oriented. While I’m sceptical of conspiracy theories - and observe that PX contributor Sam Rowntree-Williams teaches in Elam - that PX is an AUT initiated project does seem to be saying something about that institution’s particular focus. AUT is a painter friendly institution.

Pictures from events associated with this article: