‘Through the Eye of the Needle’

Press, 2 November 1989, Page 22

‘Through the Eye of the Needle’

“Through the Eye of the Needle.” Works by Nicola Jackson at the McDougall Art Annex until November 20. Reviewed by Pat Unger. In “highly detailed and vividly coloured” works, Nicola Jackson brings fun back to the sober state of maturity and gives childlike naivety a touch of wisdom. Her experience of “humankind" is expressed through sciencefiction facts and autobiographical legends. Two lacquered black and white striped skeletons, supported by a firetongued, knitting-covered arch, topped by seeingeyes, whacky puppets and heliographic marks, are the hanging features of Jackson’s grand papier mache entrance. It frames the works clustered on a far wall and gives the viewer feel-

ings of being in a grotto or shrine honouring elec-tric-bright and fanciful sights. Small images of animals, plants, humans and medical dissections are defined with graphic but inventive care. Gamins and play-school grotesques, with unlikely bodies and gel-coned hair, become highlighters of weird happenings and personal adventures. Jackson makes a gallery or museum crawl into a dramatically stimulating event (“An Incident on the Metropolitano de Madrid,” “61 Museums in 91 Days”); she makes tourist cities memorable by their oddities (“Another Threadbare Spanish Cat,” “Plain Trees in Barcelona”) and makes hours of travel into an affair of the heart, the lungs, the

eyes and the feet. Sampler-like messages, such as “In a lifetime your heart will move 2 million barrels of blood,” or, “To whom much is given, much is expected” vie with painted detail and ornate pattern to bedazzle the eye. Jackson’s three-dimen-sional skills, her finely drawn designs and realistic references capture subjective thoughts and experiences convincingly. Innovative presentation of works up one wall is successful in achieving fairground impact, but at the cost of some legibility. And knitted frames may add textured variation to over-all effect but they tend to overpower imagery. Otherwise this exhibition is a refreshing indulgence in colourful fables and detailed fictions.