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Re-examination Pays Dividends

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New Possibilities: Abstract Paintings from the Seventies at the Piper Gallery

This exhibition presents the work of artists whose work became less fashionable during the 1970s with the rise of conceptual and performance art.  While these artists are still working today, most of the work on display is from this period.  This is a very diverse exhibition: all of the artists have very individual styles.  However, a common feature is an attention to craft, precision and formal values in painting.

The range of approaches is very clear when you compare the work of Tess Jaray and Frank Bowling.  Tess’ Alhambra (1979) is deceptively simple at first glance, but closer examination draws the viewer in and reveals the surprising complexity hidden in what you believe to be predictable pattern.  What at first appears to be a repetitive motif, on closer observation shows itself to have complex variation in colour, form and scale.  Frank Bowling’s Rush Green (1977) seems to be more the sum of its parts.  His deployment of paint by pouring it directly onto the canvas and utilising flow may seem haphazard, but on inspection the result is more mysterious.  There appears to be an equivalence with art from the past – for example, Monet’s paintings of the garden at Giverney – sustained attention is rewarded.

William Henderson and Barrie Cook both use a particular vocabulary to produce very different results.  Henderson’s Funky, Black and Catch Me (1978) creates a feeling of depth and jaggedness, with a definite sense of illusionistic space, reminding one of the microscopic world when magnified.  Cook’s Blue, Red and Yellow Grid (1977) is an optical work which plays with the eyes.  It is reminiscent of cathode ray tubes warming up in a old-fashioned television.  There is a richness in the fact that the two paintings, both using repetitive linear forms, can produce such varied results.

Other highlights of the exhibition include Gary Wragg’s Carnival (1977-79), which is driven by the process of drawing; Patricia Poullain’s Untitled (1973), which has a lightness and openness whose accessibility reminds one of a childhood telescope; and finally, Trevor Sutton’s measured, well proportioned That Swing.4.K (1979) combines electric blue and black, demarcated by a delicate green line.  The piece is poised and balanced and seems to be very much of its time.

If you like your paintings to repay prolonged attention, then New Possibilities at the Piper Gallery is definitely worth a visit.

New Possibilities: Abstract Paintings from the Seventies is at The Piper Gallery, 18 Newman Street, W1T 1PE from 16 November to 21 December

Written with Ian MacNaughton

(Pictures courtesy of the artists and The Piper Gallery)

Francis West – Voyages, at the Piper Gallery

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The Piper Gallery, 18 Newman Street, London W1T 1PE
Private View: Thursday 6th September 2012, 6.30 – 8.30pm
Exhibition Dates: Friday 7th September – Friday 5th October 2012

Following the success of its debut show Then and Now in June 2012, The Piper Gallery is proud to present Voyages, an exhibition of work by Francis West. Born in 1936, West spent his childhood in a remote community on the Moray Firth in Scotland often working with his father’s fishing boats.

Some of his earliest visual memories are of tempestuous Scottish seascapes and the exhibition is formed around a series of voyages, centring on the sea cave in West’s Tempestas (1987/2012) where a turbulent wind swells the waves that carry the viewer out to a waiting ship. This belongs to West’s Palimpsests, a pivotal series of large-scale paintings dating from the early 1990s in which he deconstructed several of his earlier acclaimed expressionist pieces through frenzied over-working that sought to disrupt a sense of formal coherence. These came to represent West’s search for new, creative challenges.

Each voyage reflects the artist’s experience of real locations although West frequently employs metaphors of voyaging to explore his practice as an artist. He has described his lifelong commitment to painting and drawing as a challenging and risky quest. Although grounded in reality, West’s concepts remain tantalisingly elusive, blurring the boundaries of myth, dream, memory and experience bringing together the flotsam and jetsam of symbolic forms with fragments from poetry and historic painting. West comments on the emergence of figurative beings in this exchange, saying ‘sometimes I am surprised that these acts of deconstruction will pause around a formation which is reminiscent of a specific memory’. His often hybrid human-animal personae, reminiscent of Goya and Bacon, are suspended in a state of transition as West submits them to a process of mutation and erasure where they concurrently materialise and dissolve from the viewer’s vision.

This exhibition offers the viewer the opportunity to explore West’s voyages through several different series of work – some, as above, provide the adrenalin of fishing on a rough sea while others, of his recent Méditerranée series, with their limpid washes of pastel blues and aquamarine, afford the calm of sun-drenched beaches. These works intoxicate viewers, transporting them to the South of France with the reveries of Pierre Bonnard and the poetic pulses of André Gide. West also invokes a female entourage of enchantresses including characters reminiscent of Venus Rising, goddesses, sirens and Picasso’s Bathers.

Other works ensue from trips to the Mojave Desert or, like the Nocturnes, emerge from imagined dreamscapes in West’s Paris studio. Nocturnes are some of his most radical works, representing an internal voyage to the uncharted recesses of the subconscious. They depict an imaginary realm of unexplored forests and caverns which establish fertile womb-like habitats of grotesque flora and fauna.

Gallery Founder and Director Megan Piper says ‘This, our first solo show, gives us the opportunity to explore voyages, a theme pertinent to the ethos of the gallery. It’s exciting to be able to present a lesser-known artist whose recent work is energetic and fresh and whose maturity and experience means that he is able to explore the theme in a way a young artist would never be able to.’

Francis West – Voyages
Friday 7th September – Friday 5th October 2012
The Piper Gallery 18 Newman Street, London W1T 1PE
www.thepipergallery.com, www.twitter.com/thepipergallery
020 7148 0350

Opening Hours Tuesday-Saturday, 10am – 6pm
At other times by appointment

Admission Free

How to get there: The Piper Gallery is located on Newman Street. The nearest underground stations are Tottenham Court Road (on the Central and Northern lines), Oxford Circus Street (on the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria line) and Goodge Street (on the Northern line). The nearest rail station is London Euston.