Encounter and exchange

What painting needs is hecklers, groupies, buffs, aficionados, nerds, family members and fans.
—Justin Paton[1]

I met Simon McIntyre some months ago, following a conversation event with artist Amber Wilson at Anna Miles Gallery. It was a short meeting, but I remember being struck by McIntyre’s liveliness and warmth, and the fact that he, like me, grew up in the household of a painter. A few days later, I bumped into him again, on the steps leading up to Albert Park from Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and we had one of those conversations that starts off as a quick hello, but quickly develops into something you should really sit down for. We talked about painting and curating and writing about painting, and I realised for the first time that he was a lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, as well as a painter in his own right.

Some time later, McIntyre contacted me to discuss the project that would become Painting: a transitive space. His description was fairly brief. There would be an exhibition in two phases, or iterations, at AUT’s ST PAUL St Gallery Three. It would feature work by more than 20 Aotearoa artists, including emerging, established, and senior practitioners. Most of the artists, and one or two of the works, would appear in both iterations. There would be a modest programme of events, aimed at providing opportunities for people to talk about the works on display and the show as a whole. There would also be a publication, to which McIntyre invited me to contribute an essay.

Although I was enthusiastic about many of the artists to be included, I initially declined. I was somewhat apprehensive about the mounting of another painting show in a year that had seen several presented in Auckland, most notably Toi o Tāmaki’s mammoth Necessary Distraction. However, when I encountered Painting: a transitive space, I quickly reversed my decision. I felt that I had to write something. The exhibition appealed to me immediately. It abounded with works of exceptionally high quality. Although many of the artists were familiar to me, there were a number of exciting new discoveries. I was delighted, for instance, to see the work of Fu-On Chung for the first time, and was particularly taken with Disco Garden (2016), its luminous mesh putting me in mind of cell clusters, neural networks, and submarine refuse.

Left to right: Anoushka Akel, Fu-On Chung, Oliver Perkins, and Robert Fraser, Painting: a transitive space (installation view), ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland University of Technology, 2016. Photograph by Sam Hartnett, courtesy of ST PAUL St Gallery.

The works included were not characterised by a particular concern or style (there was, at most, a general preference for abstraction, McIntyre’s own mode of painting), but the selection did not feel disparate. The hang created visual cohesion, with poetic passages of colour and form, and the show felt underpinned by a single, personal vision. Unusually for a show at a non-commercial gallery, and very unusually for one at a university, Painting: a transitive space included no explanatory information. The decision initially struck me as risky, but it proved effective. In a world in which one is so often bombarded with curatorial posturing, it was refreshing to be required to develop an understanding based on one’s own thoughts and investigations, rather than by reference to an elaborate rationale.

In attempting to make sense of Painting: a transitive space, I found myself pondering the potential meanings of the title, the only hint at McIntyre’s intent. The word ‘transitive’ stood out as especially significant. Having once studied linguistics, I associate the term with grammar, in which it describes verbs that express some sort of interaction, transfer, or transformation. But transitivity has also been taken up by a number of art critics, most notably Nicolas Bourriaud and David Joselit. For Bourriaud, it expresses art’s need for dissemination and engagement, its dependence upon viewers for activation.[2] Joselit’s conception is at once more restricted and more complex. He uses transitivity to describe paintings that show an awareness of, and interest in, networks (social, economic, digital).[3]

Both notions of transitivity can be detected in Painting: a transitive space. The eschewal of explanation is, of course, completely in line with Bourriaud’s thinking, encouraging viewers to develop individual responses to individual pieces. A number of the works included resonate with Joselit’s ideas. The paintings of Emma McIntyre, for instance, recall his discussion of the use of modernist modes to ‘suture spectators to extra-perceptual social networks rather than merely situating them in a phenomenological relationship of individual perception’. McIntyre injects new life into that emblem of modernism, the grid, her tremulous, overlapping lines recalling information and social networks, her glowing colours denying the cynical detachment of so much so-called ‘zombie formalism’.

Left to right: Ian Jervis (three works), Fu-On Chung, Whitney Bedford, Denys Watkins, Emma McIntyre, and Denys Watkins, Painting: a transitive space (installation view), ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland University of Technology, 2016. Photograph by Sam Hartnett, courtesy of ST PAUL St Gallery.

Other sorts of transitivity are discernable within Painting: a transitive space, besides those developed by Bourriaud and Joselit. The changes in artworks between iterations immediately relates to notions of transition and transience, playing up the status of the gallery as a ‘space’ in constant flux, and of the exhibition as a passing affair. A number of the works included also embodied ideas of change (through modification of the pre-existing exhibition space) and impermanence. A strong example was Simon Morris’ Black Wall (2016), a sequence of black, grey, and white squares reminiscent of a grey scale. Painted directly on the gallery wall by Morris (with assistance from his daughter, Claudia), it was covered over once the show finished, meaning that it now exists only in photographs, memory, and principle.

Elliot Collins’ text-based work, Knowns and Unknowns (2016), went further, not only being painted on the wall, but also being developed day by day across the two iterations of the exhibition. This mode of production emphasised the status of painting as a process, not merely a result, while also fostering heightened engagement by allowing visitors to witness that process. Other works, too, played up the notion of painting as an act. The most outstanding example was probably Anoushka Akel’s Back front brain (2016), a perfectly realised improvisation in paint and pastel, which reveals—to borrow a phrase from Natasha Conland, curator of Necessary Distraction—‘the painting’s status as a document of an unwitnessed performance’.[4]

Wandering through Painting: a transitive space, I found myself thinking of transitivity as an expression of the ‘dialogic’ nature of painting: the way in which paintings may be understood to communicate with one another across time and space, the way in which the art form is intimately bound up with its own history. A number of the works included play on or resonate with those of painters of the past. Imogen Taylor’s Full Moon / King Tide (2016), for instance, evokes the cubist experiments of Louise Henderson and Colin McCahon, while her Untitled (2013) reminds me rather of the work of Max Ernst, for its use of collage and frottage, and its seeming reliance on chance effects, like the shape formed by dropping a piece of string. By alluding to the past, Taylor stresses the enduring strength of her chosen medium.

Imogen Taylor, Untitled (installation view), 2013. Photograph by Sam Hartnett, courtesy of ST PAUL St Gallery.

The arrangement of Painting: a transitive space teased out interesting relationships between the works and artists included. For instance, the biomorphic qualities of Denys Watkins’ Jittering (2013) were made more apparent by its proximity to Whitney Bedford’s The Echo (2016), which includes overtly botanical motifs. Equally, the compositional balance of Bedford’s work was more visible by reference to Watkins’ immaculately structured Alby (2015). The juxtaposition of Simon McIntyre’s own Break (2015) and Adrienne Vaughan’s Untitled (2015–16) made apparent the artists’ shared interest in experimentation with paint texture, layering, and spatial perception.

Another fascinating pairing was that of Andrew Barber’s Study (DPAG floor) (2016)—presumably a plan for a painting on the floor of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery—and Anh Trần’s Theatre of Dreams (2016). The two works are similar in colouration, and both to some extent blur the boundary between painting and sculpture. But there was also a more subtle wittiness to the juxtaposition. Anh’s work incorporates a large sewn canvas, a form for which Barber is well known. Visitors in the know were thus encouraged to think of Barber’s canvases even though none was present. And because Barber’s canvases are very different in temperament to Anh’s work, the juxtaposition emphasised the broad range of expression possible within a narrow range of physical elements. Painting’s diversity was underlined.

Left to right: Andrew Barber (floor), Saskia Leek, and Anh Trần, Painting: a transitive space (installation view), ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland University of Technology, 2016. Photograph by Sam Hartnett, courtesy of ST PAUL St Gallery.

The show also allowed one to compare works by the same artist. I was particularly interested to see Oliver Perkins’ Bridge (2012) and Vessels (2015), which gave an uncommonly strong sense of an artist testing and refining ideas over time. Both works demonstrate Perkins’ interest in gestural splashes and in using canvases in unconventional ways. Despite its impeccably shaped support, Bridge is a markedly more casual work. The painting possesses a certain ‘provisionality’—to borrow a term from Raphael Rubinstein—that put it in sympathy with Akel’s work.[5] Vessels, by contrast, feels controlled. Like other recent pieces by Perkins, it put me in mind of the art of Julian Dashper, for its quiet humour (evident in such elements as the glass-stain-like circles), and for the way it faintly suggests 1990s upholstery.

Like Dashper, McIntyre appears to be interested in expanded notions of painting. Certainly, Painting: a transitive space included a good number of works that did not employ paint, that were not paintings as conventionally understood. The inclusion of these supports another notion of transitivity, by which painting is conceived as an art form that informs the production of work in ostensibly separate media. A good example is Patrick Pound’s collage, Untitled. Although it is composed entirely of pieces of the covers of hardback books, aspects of the work clearly relate to painting and its histories, most notably the dependence on pigmented cloth and the non-objective, geometric design.

A more obscure example is Andy Thomson’s Still Life Theory (2016), part of the first iteration of the show. On the surface of things, it is a video work. However, as its title suggests, the work is informed by what we might call a painterly vision. With its ponderous and carefully framed shots of objects and interiors, it recalls the work of Dutch painters of the Golden Age, suggesting that historical painting is not so far removed from present day practice. The importance of painting for Thomson was emphasised in the second iteration, which included a large abstraction by the artist, First valley (1983). This state of affairs was reversed for Anh, with the aforementioned painting in the first iteration, and a resoundingly painterly video work, Self Doubts (2016), in the second.

Left to right: Andrew Barber (floor), Andy Thomson and Imogen Taylor, Painting: a transitive space (installation view), ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland University of Technology, 2016. Photograph by Sam Hartnett, courtesy of ST PAUL St Gallery.

In its interest in exploring the interaction between painting and other art forms or practices, Painting: a transitive space echoed a pair of painting shows presented at AUT’s ST PAUL St Galleries One and Two in 2007: Leonhard Emmerling’s PX: A purposeless production / A necessary praxis and Jan Bryant’s PX: Snow falls on mountains without wind.[6] McIntyre has told me that he had these exhibitions in mind when putting together his own show. Those fortunate enough to see all three might detect traces of homage in Painting: a transitive space, especially to Bryant’s show, with which it shared several artists, including Saskia Leek, Patrick Lundberg, and Isobel Thom.

I was particularly interested to consider the works by Lundberg and Thom in McIntyre’s show by reference to those included in PX: Snow falls on mountains without wind. Lundberg’s pieces, No title (2009) and No title (2012), connected strongly with his earlier ‘painting’, a site-specific work formed by cutting lightly into the wall of the gallery and exposing old layers of paint. His more recent pieces also employ a found, painted support that he has incised, but this time the support is loose. Where the earlier work invoked the history of the exhibition space, and highlighted its own temporary nature, the later ones return to the idea of the painting as a mobile and enduring object, one that may circulate from one context to another, taking on and perpetuating new significations.

Thom’s contribution to Bryant’s show comprised a series of paintings of the same still life subject. Created one after another over a number of days, the works reveal subtle shifts in viewpoint, as well as the slow degradation of the objects depicted. Reminiscent of cubist paintings, these ‘meta-cubist’ works aimed to better represent the multiple perspectives available as one moves through space and time. Thom’s 3 Vases (2016) in Painting: a transitive space were markedly different. They took the form of ceramic vessels painted with glazes. One can find points of similarity with the earlier works: the limited palette, the interest in geometry, the sense of a series. Here, though, paint is not used to represent our experience of objects. Instead, it forms part of objects that are experienced.

Left to right: Simon Morris, Isobel Thom (foreground), Janet Lilo, Claudia Jowitt, and Ian Jervis (three works), Painting: a transitive space (installation view), ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland University of Technology, 2016. Photograph by Sam Hartnett, courtesy of ST PAUL St Gallery.

With the later works of both Lundberg and Thom, there is a sense of painting at once freed and grounded. For me, these qualities characterise Painting: a transitive space in general. The show is not a detached study of painting, but a celebration, intimate and impassioned. In this respect, it relates to a more recent exhibition, Porous Moonlight (2012), curated by Imogen Taylor for Papakura Art Gallery. Indeed, McIntyre has cited this as another influence on Painting: a transitive space. The similarities between the two shows are considerable. Again, several artists appeared in both. Both packed a big punch, despite being small in scale. Both possessed a covert logic, largely eschewing curatorial grandstanding. Both felt as though they represented a personal vision. Both were organised by a painter.

My suspicion is that the last point is the most important. I do not mean to suggest that painters make the best curators of painting shows, though I tend to agree with Justin Paton’s recent comment that ‘no one who looks at painting a lot should do so without attempting to make a painting’.[7] By painting, one may develop the two things that make exhibitions of painting work: understanding of the medium, and passion for it. Because professional painters tend to know and care about painting, they tend also to be capable of teasing out the life of work that is so vulnerable to being robbed of its magic by curators with too many demands and too little love.

Painting: a transitive space succeeded largely because it was made by a fan, who revelled in particular works by particular artists, as well as the medium in general. It also worked because it struck an elegant balance between variety and unity. Standing in the gallery during the first iteration, I found myself thinking of the exhibition as akin to a chorus, with a host of different colours, forms, sensations, and ideas singing round the room in concert. Later, reflecting on the project in its entirety, I began to think of it instead as a kind of extended artwork—a complex super-painting, through which McIntyre portrayed painting as a site of encounter and exchange, providing a strong reminder that this ancient art form retains considerable power, and not least here, in Aotearoa.

*

Essay commissioned by Simon McIntyre for the catalogue Painting: a transitive space (Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: ST PAUL St Gallery Three, 2017).

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Painting: a transitive space
Curated by Simon McIntyre

Part One: 30 August to 3 September 2016
Part Two: 6 to 10 September 2016
ST PAUL St Gallery 3, Auckland University of Technology
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

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[1] Justin Paton, ‘The Art of Creating a Sense of Necessity with Paint’, Australian, 15 July 2016.

[2] See Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2009), 26.

[3] See David Joselit, ‘Painting Beside Itself’, October 130 (2009): 125–134.

[4] Natasha Conland, Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show (Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2016), 183.

[5] See Raphael Rubinstein, ‘Provisional Painting’, Art in America 97 (5) (2009): 122–135.

[6] See Jan Bryant and Leonhard Emmerling, PX: Thoughts on Painting (Auckland: Clouds, 2011).

[7] Paton, ‘The Art of Creating a Sense of Necessity with Paint’.