- Venue
- Supersaurus
- Location
- Wales
The teenage Gordon Dalton is under strict instructions to tidy his room. He crams rubber chickens, footballs, whoopee cushions, a plastic Incredible Hulk, a motorised Gene Simmons doll with extendable tongue as well as books and pads full of scribbled lists in marker pen. All are thrown into his cavernous wooden wardrobe. Dalton looks up at the casing which is fit to burst, it bulges and we are suspended between the premise and the climax of the joke. The ultimate pay off would be the whole contents of the wardrobe spilling out onto the unassuming Dalton burying him but it never comes, he just keeps looking up.
The work of the adult Gordon Dalton, curator of Mermaid & Monster, writer and artist, has taken him all over the world but he’s back with his first show in Wales in almost 10 years at the home of the artist-led Supersaurus collective. But don’t worry he hasn’t grown up. Why should he? His work either sucks you in or kicks your legs away from under you and he doesn’t mind which.
A teenage humour underpins works such as Hello…, there is the initial surprise, a smirk turning into a giggle or possibly confusion and the need for the joke to be retold. This is a painting of Lionel Ritchie with his cock out after all and how could anyone paint this with a straight face? The Hello in the title becomes a proposition HELLO! or possibly Hello. Dalton is clearly having fun and when his paintings work – they let it all hang out.
Paint is thinly applied, balanced between humbled and finished. It is an interesting scruffiness that says if you add any more you’ll ruin me. Each painting is small, modest and economical. These are works hanging out with one another, all untucked t-shirts and ghetto blasters with the volume up. But when they are right, they are just right sitting outside the headmaster’s office with Peter MacDonald and Philip Guston. In Come on Die Young, Dalton extends a nod to the work of Neil Jenny and references his own earlier work, a series of printed bunting pieces that push the nihilistic declaration of punk rock onto colourful triangular fabric flags bearing the words No Future.
Regardless of what media he chooses, there is always a playful way in – whether it’s a slap in the face, a tickle under the chin or a poke in the eye. Colour, form and anything else he has in his locker goofs around and we’re the ones left asking questions. Are they just for laughs? Are they jokes at our expense? The work is there to pickle you, opening up a can of worms that will probably make you realise that yes, it is your fault and you probably could have done something about it but you haven’t.
With titles like Stegasaurus died at the disco, Last House on the left and Tourist info said I’d have a good time, there is a conscious decision here to distort, to throw you off the scent or take you to the X that marks the spot and hand you a shovel. These snippets and misheard song lyrics are effective in adding understanding and making it a little more difficult in equal measure. Despite the casual and accidental way of bringing the images together there is a conscious and studied awkwardness to the formal structure of each piece. Some work better than others but hit or miss, Dalton knows well the look he wants.
Each work is vulnerable, strong yet wonky, however much it takes advantage of you, it is they that are flashing. But however exposed the work is I am confident that Dalton could and would paint anything. Which is why he chooses random objects, or his own rudimentary assemblages to work from. For this show he has asked for donations from visitors which he will use in future paintings. He consistently tests himself and it is this attitude which drives Dalton’s new work, making it his most urgent and because of that he consequently leaves himself open like a sitting duck but this lighter, more sensitive Dalton flickers and that this is why it will be so interesting to see what comes next.
These paintings may look slap dash but they have been a long while coming and there are signs of a battle. It is these signs that are essential to their success. They are more than paintings, instead resembling found objects, battered after a long campaign both laboured and considered. To make something look ridiculous, to paint a giant whopper or make that a whoopee cushion takes real skill. There is much joy to be found here and at times there is perfectly pitched melancholia hovering between the suggestion and celebration of the banal, each jockeying for your attention, offering the climax of a joke left untold.
We’re back now with the teenage Dalton, in school he sits at the back of the class, arms folded slackly creasing his Judas Priest Defenders of the Faith T-shirt. He leans back on his chair to see his school mates out in the yard pretending to be Boro legends. He’d be Colin Cooper or Bernie ‘The Wolfman’ Slaven if he was playing. As the hands of the clock and his detention ticks by, he fumble in his pockets fingering a cheap lighter, some loose change not enough to buy anything worthwhile, a red topped ticket stub, some cigarette papers with a drawing of a naked women on. He’d casually raise his two feet onto the desk and slouch back. You’d think he wasn’t paying attention, almost slacking, but when you meet his eye you know he means business.
