Grid art at gallery

Press, 22 August 1984, Page 20

Grid art at gallery

“The Grid” is the second in a series of exhibitions entitled “Aspects of Recent New Zealand Art” The exhibition of the work of 10 New Zealand artists, like the first in the series, “New Image”, is a curatorial exhibition identifying a shared theme of the contributing artists. "New Images”'was exhibited, as part of a nationwide tour, at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery last year. “The Grid” opens at the gallery tomorrow. As the name suggests, the shared theme in this show is the grid motif. The exhibition’s curator, Andrew Bogle, has used the grid as a unifying factor. The exhibition is limited to the painters of the 1970 s working with non-figurative imagery, although many other painters have been identified by Mr Bogle as using the grid. The initiative for the show came from a passing comment from an Australian who, on a visit to this country, remarked that the grid was a frequent image in contemporary New Zealand painting. Mr Bogle writes in the book that accompanies the show, “The most intensive period of grid painting in this country has been the decade 1970 to 1980 ... In the present context, what is meant by grid painting is works incorporating nonmimetic grids as a formal compositional device.” Grid painting in this century is an international phenomenon, Mr Bogle says. The grid is present in certain New Zealand landscapes, such as Rita Angus’s “Fog, Hawke’s Bay”, which in the patchwork of paddocks is gridlike and the artist worked on a series of tiny squares to achieve the desired proportion.

Other examples of figurative painting incorporating formal grids are Colin McCahon’s “Six Days in Nelson and Canterbury”, which consists of six small landscapes set in a painted lattice framework and Michael Illingworth’s “The Golden Kiwi”, which features characters in compartments. In these paintings a relation between the formal grid as a device and the patterns in the landscapes can be seen. “The geometry of man measured against the medley of nature” is Mr Bogie’s description. The grid is an organising structure, he says. “One of the primary attributes of a grid is its flatness. It maps a surface. Imposed on any painting it asserts its flatness.”. Although the formal grid structure gives discipline to a painting, some artists, like Gordon Walters, have shifted from the formal grid to a j more flexible, less restricting asymmetric pattern. There is more to a grid painting than repeated images and the grid itself, Mr Bogle warns. grid acts instead as a prop or rallying device for the expressive content of the painting. In many of the paintings, the expressive vehicle is colour. The grid serves to highlight contrasts and changes in colour. The 10 artists, whose work , is included in the exhibition, include two Canterbury artists, John Hurrell and Don Peebles. The others are Richard Killeen, Gordon Walters, Robert McLeod, Allen : Maddox, lan Scott, Ray Thorburn, Mervyn Williams and Geoffrey Thornley. Of some of the exhibiting artists i and their use of the

grid, Mr Bogle says: “John Burrell’s grid paintings work on two levels: firstly as structured patterns of tonally balanced components ... secondly as the realisation of a systematic process which the viewer is challenged to establish and decipher. “Mervyn Williams uses the grid as a paradigm of order which he then plays off against an intuitive and spontaneous impulse. A recurring motif in his work is a hairline grid imposed upon, or sinking into, a hazy variegated field.” Other of the painters have moved on from the formal grid to improvisations on the patterns to achieve a more open style. Mervyn Williams probably best sums up this use of the grid: “Simply taking a white canvas and ruling a grid x>n it... Having established a secure point on which to operate I then feel happy about manipulating it This is the point at which invention, creation, the process of artifice, comes into it I then feel impelled to take risks and open the situation to the unexpected.” “The Grid”, as part of the trilogy on recent New Zealand art, was organised by the Auckland City Art Gallery and is touring with the help of the New Zealand Art Gallery Directors Council The third in the trilogy, “Anxious Image”, will be exhibited in Christchurch next year. “The Grid” exhibition will run until September 30.