Sexuality shared in gallery

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33942, 8 September 1975, Page 14

Sexuality shared in gallery

Barry Cleavin and Trevor' Moffitt have opened a joint exhibition at the Brook/Gifford Gallery. Moffitt showing a series of “intimate” genre paintings, Cleavin a selection of recent etchings. They share a choice of subjects involving greater or lesser degrees of sexuality, but otherwise their work could hardly be more different. Cleavin’s contribution is drawn from work completed before and during his recent six-month sojourn in Australia, the Australian experience having in no discernible ( way altered his vision. It is a vision, sometimes surreal, ’ sometimes savage. often ’ risque, which knows no ’ regional context; he is a printmaker of international 1 ’ stature capable of holding his ’ own in any company. He draws with a delicate i line charged with a nervous i i

and quivering dynamism, probing and prodding at his subjects mercilessly. His mind, whimsical quizzical but above all else sardonic, Twists his forms, giving them a new significance, putting objects into a hitherto unconsidered relationship: : couples seemingly copulating metamorphosing from their primeval ape-skull prototype, fish and horses, strange hybrid creatures with aeroplane anatomies; all placed into dark mysterious spaces of modulated aquatint. REFERENCE TO PAST Cleavin makes constant reference to the past, his hybrid creatures recall those of Bosch. His “For a new anatomy” series and “From the Vesalius anatomy,” find their origins in Vitruvian, Renaissance, and subsequent theories of proportion and structure. “Big fish eat little fish,” is an example of the use of a medieval conceit previously given print form ’by Bruegel. His anamorphic head in “It makes you mad,” derives from the distorted skull, a

i,, pun on his own name, in s Holbein’s “Ambassadors,” but s | less particularly from the 1J whole area of seventeenth | century optical experimentan’tion. Cleavin uses the past g’and he uses the present, proo ducing prints which, while >: belonging so much to Eurog pean art and thought of r | today, are absorbed by yes- ?, terday and belong as much '-|to art and thought of a half e millenium or more ago as to o that of today. ,f Moffitt’s self-conscious search for a particularised national imagery has given way to a more universal 1 genre, painting. j i *The subject of daily domes- ‘ tic life has been transported ' from the kitchen and liviiigj rooms to the bedroom in a ■series of works devoted to the depiction of sexual activij’ties. His gravy and ochre colouration has made way e ’for a more sensitive palette, ® | still more tonal than I colourist. Moffitt paints with II a coarse directness and brashness which at its best results t in a fluid use of paint, tracsllng from time to time a a I strong contour, defining a

mice edge and creating conjVincing form. FRANK SUBJECTS His choice of subject, and the catalogue reads like a page from a railway station book-stall best-seller, is difficult to understand, except that it may be seen to be evidence of the frankness of the 70s bringing into the public forum even the most taboo aspects of human relationships. He has drawn the curtains on an aspect of our life, but as such the works are probably more of sociological interest than'they are artistic. His attention to the acts is one of involved fascination rather than the bonestripping scepticism of Cleavin. Moffitt’s choice of subject has taken precedence over painterly problems. Few works measure up to the genre subjects predating this excursion to the bedroom, and none extend our range of painted experience beyond that of conventional illustration. * The exhibition will close on September 19. —T.L.R.W.