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               Woodlands Gallery, Greenwich           please click on the icons above and the 'live' text below to navigate the site

 

                               button2.gif  catalogue

 

 

 

 

 

 

`First painters in space'

64” x 75” acrylic 1979

 

This plays with Titians' `Bachus and Ariadne'. They are not only the first painters in space but also the first `happening'. Titians' painting has a wonderfully appropriate cosmic sky.

 

 

 

The Woodlands Gallery was close to my studio at Charlton House in Greenwich. It had a great space to show some of the works that I had made for an aborted show at the South Yarra Gallery in Melbourne in 1976.

 

I included a number of works from shows at the Redfern Gallery in 1973 and 1976 as the works included in this show followed a general theme of works based on other artists work. I was interested in the explorations of space and particularly the way in which visual information was being processed and sent back from space; how television had changed our idea of reality, how our knowledge of esoteric ideas and the world in general had increase exponentially, how the second hand nature of all this new experience affected our idea of the world, how the rise of feminism and a plethora of `minority' issues taking centre stage affected my perception of myself. All this begins to feature in these works along side my ongoing interest in the conceptual nature of art and its relationship to painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

`Organism (constructivist kitchen)

59” x 78.5” acrylic 1978

 

This plays with an idea about television interference. Van Doesburg constructs a work around a black hole in a Bauhaus kitchen floating above a landscape redolent of the microcosm and the macrocosm resonating with the flashes of a pixillated screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

`N and a painting in the modern manner'

64.5” x 76.5” acrylic 1979

 

This is another play on Manets' Olympia.

Androgeny and youth were uppermost in my thoughts. The structure of the painting and the painting on the wall is based on the organisation of the geometry of the models face. The men are up the wall and lead a pretty dance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

`Secret of the pyramids'

59” x 78.5” acrylic 1979

 

A play on ambition and masculinity: the rationale of geometry and the everyday invention and misrepresentation of meaning

 

 

 

 

 

 

`Their first dance'

39.5” x 59.5” acrylic 1975

 

Gilbert and George perform for Joseph Beuys, Barry Flanagan, Christo, David Troostwyk and all those artists that contributed to the exhibition `When attitudes become form'

 

 

 

 

 

 

`Ladies wear'

57” x 102” acrylic 1979

 

Botticelli provided the format for this play,

when women discover lesbianism: popular outcome of feminism at the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

`Pegwell Bay'

45” x 59.5” 1975

 

Based on the painting of the same name

by William Dyce

 

 

 

 

 

 

`Cross piece' (detail)

39.5” x 59.5” acrylic 1976

 

This work plays with `Marriage of convenience' by William Quiller Orchardson. This painting became a comment on my relationship with Violet Dulieu of The South Yarra Gallery. The title refers to this and other abstract works I was making at the time referred to in the painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This show was primarily about painting so it was truly ironic that Chris LeBrun, a friend of mine, at the heart of a contemporary movement, characterised as `The new spirit in painting', should tell me that he thought I wasn't really a painter after having seen this show. I knew what he meant in context of the, then, current trend that was much more expressive, the subject matter more 'stream of consciousness', the paintings more involved with the substance and viscosity of paint itself. This trend in painting was a move against modernism and particularly minimalism. His observation had an effect on me for a number of years thereafter. Of course it was nonsense but once you have heard something you cannot unhear it. I could not align myself to an idea about painting that was reactionary in my opinion.

I was concerned about how my work had become so reliant on ideas and how my experience in Israel had upset my whole conception of the artist I was. Colour was another issue that I needed to come to terms with and therefore this exhibition marks the beginning of a change to the way in which I was working.