Auton 'Paintings’
“Paintings” by Jonathan Auton at La Quete Gallery, 73 Manchester Street until May 31. A series of paintings on regular and irregular shaped boards is being exhibited by Jonathan Auton at the newly opened La Quete Gallery in Manchester Street. Its white space shows to advantage this sombre, mixed media work. Auton makes good use of scrawl and scratch marks over collaged material to animate surfaces which are otherwise dismal in colour and distraught in subject matter. Attitudes of life emerge from blackened backgrounds. Hints of urban war-
fare, dehumanisation in the workplace, and the hypnotic effect of cars and mobility indicate that doubts about violence, death and money find constant expression in paint. No. 9, “Workplace,” carries the most authority. The directionless fantasies that occupy a non-involved brain in a working body are conveyed by such images as a slice of cake and the word “mathematics” swallowed in a void of meaningless signs. Many are reminiscent of scenes from polluted, industrial cities. They are intense pictures, worked with sincerity and with feeling for raw space. PAT UNGER
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Bibliographic details
Press, 25 May 1989, Page 21
Word Count
180Auton 'Paintings’ Press, 25 May 1989, Page 21
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