Exhibitions
Michael Andrews (Anthony D'Offay till 4 July)
Ritual rocks
Giles Auty
Many people in Britain were first made aware of the symbolic significance of the great isolated rock formations of Au- stralia by one of the earliest examples of new-wave Australian cinema: Picnic at Hanging Rock. This film impressed me when I first saw it eight years ago but watching it again recently on television I wondered why. On the first occasion I was overshadowed by an appointment with a surgeon the following day and fear this unbalanced my judgment. Second time around the experience seemed pretty emp- ty — or, to put it more kindly, pretty but empty. In his current exhibition Rock of Ages Cleft for me at Anthony D'Offay (23 Dering Street, W1), Michael Andrews pays pictorial tribute to Ayer's Rock and to the nearby outcrop known as The Olgas M more convincing fashion. His paintings do not lack symbolic content but, unlike the film, are stylish without being stylised. Michael Andrews is a most interesting artist. Very little is seen or heard of him between his spasmodic exhibitions, the last being the major retrospective of his works at the Hayward Gallery in 1980. To his credit, he has stood aside from pictorial fashion since student days and appears to have been neglected by buyers for major British institutions in consequence. Impor- tant private collections — the Thyssen- Bornemisza, for example — have not been so backward. Why the Tate do not own better or more recent examples of his work is a mystery. I must regretfully conclude it is because he is good as well as British, attributes too seldom evidenced, either singly or collectively, in recent purchases. Those familiar with the artist's work will know his penchant for exploring themes through series of related paintings. His early sequences of 'party' paintings include `The Deer Park', 'All Night Long' and `The Colony Room I', a painting featuring some of the luminaries from 'Muriel s' during the early Sixties: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Bernard et al. for the public, these images first established an idea of Andrews's work which has become less true or typical as the years advance. More recent themes include such diverse topics as seaside images of pier and prom- enade, topiary, the contents of aquaria and stalking deer. A major pleasure of Michael Andrews's work is that it is always and convincingly personal. If aquaria engage him, he paints them, gently probing their pictorial possibilities. I believe Andrews has the capacity to make paintings based on almost anything one can think of, no matter how mundane — for some odd reason, the idea of launderettes comes to mind — interesting and illuminating. This strikes me as a test of a very good artist.
How much more exciting, then, that the artist should work, as here, from a subject that tickled the recesses of his imagination since he first saw a photograph of it some years before. Ayer's Rock rises sheer and massive from an infinity of surrounding scrub at the very centre of Australia. Every hump and mound, blemish and fissure of this geological curiosity has meaning for the aborigine. However massive the rock, it is as though it can scarcely bear the weight of its symbolic meaning. No wonder the artist finally approached the rock with that sense of awe which clearly infuses the central and largest painting of the show. This monumental work, entitled 'The Cathedral, North-East Face' is 14 feet wide and seems even bigger. The red rock image, placed centrally, is hypnotic and overpowering against a dark blue sky. Andrews has arrived at a personal means of painting — largely arid, flat and com- plex — where the final images appear as much organic as manufactured. This suits the subject matter well. While the artist's drawing of rocks in his large, acrylic paintings might not have satisfied Ruskin entirely, his sensitive water colours might nevertheless have pleased the inimitable Cotman. It is no surprise to learn that Norwich is the artist's birthplace. No doubt he has studied Cotman in the city's Castle Museum. Nor would Andrews's 'In Shade — foot of Olga Gorge Katatjuta' entirely disgrace that great English master. For a long time art criticism spurned Works which glorified the physical world and I welcome this exhibition especially as a step towards discrediting this deplorable trend. Those who are never moved by their physical surroundings are less than half alive. From the Sixties I remember the case of an artist who covered the windows of his studio — which overlooked one of Bri- tain's loveliest little headlands — lest physical reality impinge on his murky introspection.
Andrews gives scale to his compositions by the use of tiny human figures and marsupials. These are beautifully con- ceived and appear entirely 'true to their contexts. The sole improbable work is 'Valley of the Winds' where what look like the tops of giant frankfurters sprout from the surrounding plain. Yet even these are credible. I thank the artist for awakening a strong urge in me to see them for myself.
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