Trengrove paintings

Press, 25 July 1985, Page 21

Trengrove paintings

“New Work.” Paintings by Pauline Trengrove at the Brooke/Gifford Gallery until July 24. Reviewed by John Burrell. Seven small canvases, and one larger work, are presented by Pauline Trengrove in the Brooke/Gifford Gallery. They are abstract paintings which refer to the Canterbury landscape through variations of grey, cream and yellow ochre in the colouring. Some hill-forms and high horizon lines are also present. The restricted palette gives the show a sense of unity, yet the paintings vary greatly in the way their lines and planes affect depicted space. Many of the paintings here look like mixtures of the architectural abstraction of the Californian painter, Richard Diebenkorn, and synthetic cubism as developed by Gris and Picasso. However, in some works vertical and horizontal bands which were Dieben-korn-derived, disrupt the flatness of the picture plane by forming arches around the central elements. The large painting, “Peninsula,” for example, is unresolved, looking like hillforms viewed through a slot in a bunker, with the painting flatteing out in the bottom half. The spatial ten-

sions between looking through the painting in the top half and looking at the surface on the bottom half, make the work unintentionally disjointed. The presence of a horizon line in many works seems an unnecessary part of their compositions, and an obligatory gesture to ensure that the works are seen as linked to the Canterbury landscape, and not as totally abstract. Portions of boat-masts, buildings and hill are successfully integrated into the compositional structure without destroying the flatness of the picture plane, but the presence of high horizon lines immediately introduces a depth which acts against the canvases surface. So it is that the best work is without the continuous horizontal lines, and it shows the influence of the German abstractionist, Julius Bissier. Free of linear geometry and symmetry, no. 7, (“Untitled”) is the simplest of the paintings and an elegant arrangement of four thinly painted, overlapping shapes. Some of the difficulties inherent within these paintings result from Trengrove’s inability to shake off the influence of Diebenkorn, a role model she acquired while a university student.

Diebenkorn’s colours from the Californian desert she adapted to fit into a Canterbury context. If there is any value in the use of such models for artists, it lies not in providing examples of technique or visual qualities which can be imitated. Rather it lies in helping to explain the origins of signs like brushstrokes or symbols, and how and why they can be constructed or borrowed by artists. Methods of thinking which analyse visual codes and which consider how correspondences are established between signifiers and signifieds (in fields such as fashion, films and literature), are just as useful to artists as technical skills. They ensure a theoretical interest in the nature of visual communication, outside the manipulation of formal properties. There is more to Canterbury than dry colours and patchwork fields. If art which uses local referents is to become more sophisticated, it needs to involve a closer look at areas such as the history and economics of this place and the social factions within it, instead of presuming that regional art must contain images of the land.