Art
Explorative
John McEwen
John McLean's exhibition of abstract paintings at the House Gallery (till 20 August) is the best new work show to have appeared this year. And what makes it even better is that it has been promised so long. McLean is thirty-nine and for over a decade he has held a certain cachet in the art world as a teacher, occasional critic (he once did a stint for The Guardian) and zealous painter in the manner and style of the New York School most famously advocated by the critic Clement Greenberg. The stance was admirably serious but the painting, a hazard of post-Greenbergianism, tended to be academic. It was respectable but too knowingly within the accepted canon. These new works, still in acrylic, still modest enough in size and gently coloured, beneficially taps his Scottish roots and there is a transformation. In his last major London show, the Hayward 'New York' exhibition in 1975, his canvasses were narrow verticals, the painting somewhat severely fitted to the format. Now they come in all shapes and sizes, with brushstrokes and textures to match. Acrylic being a water-based paint the visual incident is more varied than would be possible with oils. McLean often mixes in a gel to achieve a simultaneous effect of thickness and translucence. Such textural brushstrokes that show the physical action of their making tend to sit on the surface, in contrast to paint which has been applied with a water-loaded brush or allowed to suffuse previously soaked parts of the canvas. The best paintings are the ones in which he creates the subtlest plays of nuance and ambiguity through this control of wet and dry. But there is another side which distinguishes these paintings in terms of his previous work, and that is the way in which they evoke his homeland. He has used evocative titles before but then they seemed tenuous and, accordingly, pretentious. Now they match the paintings perfectly. All of them have a country air and most of them recall Scotland. This too is appropriate because what McLean has done in these pictures is release, in freehandled abstract form, the colours used to describe that country by some of the representational Scottish painters who influenced him in his youth — Gillies, William Littlejohn and others. Here then are the colours of the Scottish landscape, vegetable colours, with the notes of surprise that the clarity of the light and the water-freshness of the place always brings: the russets and apricots of the hills, the pinks of bellheather, the shocks of green moss, the blues of the rocks. And, inevitably, they also evoke the feeling of the place in their method: stains, peat smears and the soaking wetness of it all. 'The Sower's Song' (a poem by Thomas Carlyle) embodies a wide range of these effects singing off a paler ground than is used elsewhere. It is the boldest sample of the riches that should now be in store. The only easy option to be avoided is a relapse into expressionism. 'Catterline' is named after the fishing village frequented by Joan Eardley and other Scottish painters, so its Eardlian brushstrokes are acceptable. Nevertheless here and in 'Cranesbill' there are stylistic and representational references that he would do well to keep a pawky eye for if he is to keep the local universal.
Garth Evans's new sculpture also shows inspiriting development (Rowan till 10 August). He has always tried his hand at new materials and his latest work is no exception. Sculpture is more a question of making things than painting, and it often happens, especially with the freedom of modern sculpture, that the process spontaneously gives rise to the object and is not, as in the old days, a passive skill at the service of some ideal. Evans's latest work is, as it has been before, about procedure. The history of its evolution is made visible. Not only that, taken altogether it is its final aesthetic point. On the floor of the gallery there is a raft of planks. They have been stained a uniform brown with creosote. The creosote tangs the air. Originally, and quite obviously if you think about it, these planks must have been all of a piece. Now they have been divided, sub-divided, cut into squares, into octagonals so that empty squares form when four are joined together, and so on. They have also been sawn into short lengths and glued and dowelled together again. The final piece declares -every stage of this progess in a variety of rhythmic and textural inter-relationships. The other thing peculiar to sculpture to a greater degree, particularly these days, than painting is context, the way it alters and is altered by its surroundings. At the Rowan Evans's two most recent pieces are made of polythene strips laid on the floor. The strips are densely layered and welded. In
— so-called after its place of origin — the work has been trimmed to form a square rectangle, its shape accentuated by the parallel weld-lines and punctuated by a series of narrow cut-out slits. Depending on circumstances it can look solid or transparent, nacreous or metallic. Downstairs a
further change of context and arrangement make diagnonally overlapped sheets of the material on a dark carpet have a transparent milkiness, like a jellyfish. This explorative quality in Evans's work has admirably novel results, and this exhibition is his most experimental to date.
It is worth mentioning that this is the last chance to see two important exhibitions of the work of Bonnard (Lefevre till 29 July) and Kandinsky (Achim Moeller till 30 July). The Bonnard is particularly important and at Achim Moeller's there is the bonus of a twentieth-century masters show in the back gallery where you will find a good Mondrian, among other things. And if you want to see the largest photograph in the world go along to the Roundhouse Gallery when Simon Read makes intelligent use of the space with his photographic installation 'Faltering Steps, Staggering Feat' (till 5 August).
Previous page
