Wood sculpture and a mixed bag

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33959, 27 September 1975, Page 9

Wood sculpture and a mixed bag

The Brooke/Gifford Gallery has opened two new exhibitions, the one of sculpture by Bing Dawe, the other of paintings by Tim Garrity. Both will close on October 3.

Dawe's sculptures are all jof wood, built up of lamin- ! ated strips into blocks or panels, natural, machined, polished, or black painted. He establishes a grid of planks and then sets out to djsturb it, penetrate it, twist it. In so doing his jointing is too frequently seen to be lacking, planks have moved apart, or fibreglass cement between machined and natural wood finishes has cracked and is not filling the space intended. His panels are roughly surfaced and unevenly finished.

He encases green limbs in laminated blocks, exposing the contrasted grains and forms; takes timber, a material with a certain plasticity, and exaggerates it; exploits timber jointing in complex arrangements; and

splits blocked forms open to reveal other contained forms (in one a whole separate world of wooden dolls, cars, aeroplanes, houses, trains). But it is a series of somewhat dry solutions to a problem. He fails to impart a real sense of verve, and his compositional schemes are too often arbitrary or contrived.

Garrity is represented by 11 polychrome paintings on paper, and. nine monotone ink-on-paper paintings, the former from the mid sixties, and the latter from 1973 and 1974. The earlier works, with a. colouration and fragmented imagery recalling Orphism but more immediately of ; Pop derivation, containing stars, discs and swirling forms suggesting some obscure occult religion in a sort of cosmic grand opera, are linked to the more recent examples by "Painting Kyoto 1968,” where the celestial ■ dynamism becomes land oriented through the reinstatement of the horizon, and where monochromatic forms take their place next to their coloured companions,

The black and white works, sfa and cloudscapes executed with vigorous coarse brushwork, are still atmospheric in a cosmological fashion. Agitated clouds scurry across the heavens as if driven by a force of unknown potency, winds rage, driving spray before them. The clouds are the dwelling places of the Gods, agitated forms interspersed with mechanistic components (in No. 13 these are actual collage cog wheels and push rods) — they belong to the feeling of the earlier works in spite of their more figurative appearance and austere means.

It is something of a mixed bag — some of the coloured works shimmer with a richness of a high order indeed, others fall somewhat shorter. Some of the black works (15, 13) are united into a solid compositional i order, while in others the ielements tend to move independently and apart without the necessary cohesion. His presentation also leaves a good deal to be desired, — T.L.R.W.