The Galleries: Exposed to the light, concealed in shadows

By T.J. McNAMARA

A remarkable number of artists are showing work this week. Gallery after gallery is showing the work of not one but two or three artists.

Is there a line through all of this? Decidedly not. Like all contemporary art, it ranges across a spectrum of styles: one contrast this week is between paintings that are allusive and give hints and those that are explicit.

The exhibition by Keren Cook at the McPherson Gallery until August 23 is full of shadowy suggestions. The shapes are repeated layers of sharp-edged, dark forms.

With the sharp edges sometimes gleam areas of soft, delicately coloured painting, at other times there is glaring yellow. Between the masses and lines of dark paint are areas of light which shine like portals into the distance.

The dark components across the painting form a cantilevering structure and also suggest places where we know something is hidden - hints of obscurity and claustrophobia.

There is plenty for the eye to feast on in this articulation of dark and gleams of light so these paintings can be enjoyed on the level of abstraction, inventive making and interesting surface.

The paintings take on an extra dimension when we learn the painter is proud of her Jewish heritage and has been inspired largely by the ghettos of Venice and Warsaw.

The ghetto in Venice was the first and gave its name to such districts. The Jews, the treatment of Shylock to the contrary, were considered an important part of the community, although they were pushed into a small area whose entrance, even today, is startling in its narrowness. It was sealed by gates each night.

The sealed area was small and the houses were subdivided into close, dark living spaces.

The situation also gives meaning to those sudden encrustations of yellow which are acid in tone. Although they show a way out, they are also a brand.

The paintings are made by using tape and painting over it, tearing it off, applying more paint, letting it dry, then applying more paint and more tape.

It is a modern equivalent of the glazes used by oil painters in the past and gives passages of unexpected and suddenly interrupted richness.

The paintings succeed because they suggest rather than describe overlapping layers of existence and dim ways in a closed space. They suggest a great deal but are explicit about almost nothing.

The best are called Constructs but there is little difference between the Venice Construct and the Warsaw Construct.

Surely the painter must develop her considerable talent in the direction of giving different situations different character.

On the other hand, at the Studio of Contemporary Art in Newmarket until August 15 are three painters, all working under the general title Human Presence, whose work is all clear, explicit images.

Most intriguing is a newcomer on the scene, Ben Clarke, and his rich fields of colour. On these, seen from high above, are isolated, tiny figures of accurately painted people. A few include geometric shapes, much paler and blending into the background, that emphasise the surface as paint.

These vivid paintings highlight the isolation of people, their camouflage, their arrivals and departures. Although the figures are beautifully painted, especially when they cast dark shadows, they leave a lot to the viewers' imagination.

Barry Ross Smith leaves much less to think about. He paints specifics: the dappled light that falls on a cheek through a star hat, the tattoo on a muscular arm, accurately recorded tractors and outboard motorboats.

The images are strong but do not suggest anything we do not know. We look, agree, "Yes that's how it is", and speculate no further.

The studio's third painter, Peter Miller, pushes us to think further than his images by literary means - his titles. The paintings are of shiny crockery, some complete, others broken.

So far so good, but when we are pushed by titles such as Vessel of Past Abundance, or when two cups are called The Attraction of Opposites, we know we are being pushed toward symbolism, even if we did not recognise it.

It is debatable whether the visual images have enough intensity to carry the weight of meaning the titles suggest. They take us only a little way towards this, whereas a hint of a setting, a more dream-like atmosphere, might lead us to deeper thought.

Also in Newmarket, a curious mixture of the explicit and the puzzle is provided by Patrick Pound's exhibition at the Anna Bibby Gallery, until the end of the month.

His considerable reputation has been gained as a collector of oddities. Here he is showing a mural of his expertly taken colour photos which grab unexpected and pleasing things; a detail of feet in fancy court slippers in a painting by Jacques-Louis David, vapour trails in a blue sky, a plate with a stain that looks like a map of New Zealand, doors, walls, many things explicit and intriguing and all real.

On the other side of the gallery is some of his sculpture, trays full of jig-saw puzzles. On the puzzles are found objects, the strangest of all a hockey goal-keeper's mask suggesting both helmet and skull. These objects are explicitly real yet their meaning is completely, mystifyingly open.