- Venue
- ICA: Institute of Contemporary Arts
- Location
In a show with several artists there are always going to be preferred pieces. In addition to appreciating the challenge or finer qualities of works, we are also free to take an instant like or dislike to things. How often, with a little understanding or insight that dislike can be dispelled, we see a way in, and a beam of light illuminates something we just didn’t get.
In writing some other reviews, it is my day job to stay around pieces I don’t necessarily like, until I get some sort of handle or revelation about them. You just can’t not appreciate work when you have taken it in and considered it.
The viewer is free to walk by and look at the works that speak immediately, rather than spending precious time trying to figure them out. Having taken it upon myself to write about this show, I also felt free to walk past works I thought very little of, and enjoy the ones I liked. I guess that if I had spent time with the ones I omitted I would have ended up liking them in the end.
Jennifer Bailey’s paintings, Jug Studies, have a remarkable quality of glassy colour. Sometimes the best bits are left on the palette, but Bailey manages to bring a sense of spontaneity to her considered compositions.
I admired the Jack Brindley Interface (modes of painting) piece with an image gaffer taped onto a propped slab of concrete. It successfully moved the photography into the area of object, or sculpture.
George Little’s piece, Entrance to the Restaurant manages to create a universe out of grubby underlay.
Jackson Sprague’s watercolour plaster pieces intrigue, as if they hold some secret knowledge.
Tyra Tingleff’s untitled paintings stand out with an emotional intelligence of colour.
George Eksts Circumspects video piece shows horses endlessly passing through a circular holding, hypnotically referencing Escher and Muybridge.
I’m always a little saddened when artists present pieces as untitled. Sometimes deliberate, sometimes a cop-out, the convention in galleries does not just omit the writing where titles would be, but names them Untitled. I feel it is a lost opportunity.
