TONY TWIGG AND CHRIS CAPPER- 28 APRIL TO 22 MAY, 2010- OPENING REMARKS

It is an honour to be presenting two mature mid career artists tonight and delighted in the knowledge that both these bodies of work sit comfortably in the two rooms and will sustain a viewer’s attention for the next month in the gallery.

CHRIS CAPPER, in the Project Room, presents 11 new works that he started working on in 2007.

I recently became aware of a group called Slow Art where, (inspired by the slow food movement), guests are invited to sit in front of one masterpiece in a museum and whilst having a meal look and discuss only that one painting for a number of hours.

The slow peeling back of references, techniques, possibilities is something worth doing with any of Chris’ work.

When you stop and really look at Chris Capper paintings it becomes obvious they are not pictures depicting bunches of flowers, nor are they really about the refined balancing of figurative and abstract elements. They are all of those things and more.

So how do you then define the ‘more’?

I really enjoy my conversations with Chris and this afternoon we were both recalling how much we enjoyed the Simon Schama’s TV documentary on Mark Rothko last Sunday.

Schama was talking about one of the words Rothko most often used about his art; he was always concerned whether it was ‘poignant’, the inevitable passing of things.

All good artists spend a lifetime determined to trap their fugitive visions.

I wish I had Schama’s beautiful turn of phrase, but I will quote from him about Rothko as it will allow us to understand some of the reasoning behind Chris Capper’s art:

“It is impossible not to be touched by that poignancy: of our comings and goings, entrances and exits, womb, tomb and everything in between.”

Now we come to the main exhibition tonight, TONY TWIGG.

I realised only tonight that Tony exhibited at the Gary Anderson Gallery in 1985, so we are somewhat honoured to be passed on the baton of showing Tony’s art as Anderson is fondly remembered by many gathered here tonight as a seminal and influential aesthete.

This is Tony’s first exhibition in Sydney since 2004.

During that time he has embarked on a journey into Asia, where he has now become better known and respected in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Manila than here in his home town, Sydney.

It is not that surprising as Tony has found an audience which culturally accepts abstraction for what it is….it just is. Here with the inheritance of a western aesthetic we still searching for a narrative or conceptual springboard to deconstruct or construct the ‘real’ meaning.

When you view Tony’s work tonight, think of that journey.

Whilst walking on a journey you become aware of your breathing.

Air going into your body, air going out.

This is something intrinsic when viewing the series of work known as discs and accordions.

Some of the ‘shards’ and vertical sharp contract shoulder to shoulder into a tight visual space, breathing in.

Then others, offering the same design, breathe out, with the expanse of negative space allowing them to stretch out along the wall.

Breathe in and out.

When viewing Tony Twigg’s work you sense design within interiors, the architecture of built objects shaping environments and living spaces.

Breathe in and each work has a sense of collage, a collection of juxtaposed objects, lines, shapes.

Breathe out and each work has a feel of being a painting. The surfaces are treat with subtle variable tones soaking into the wooden plane.

Breathe in and each work becomes a drawing, the line of nature drifting and then pushing.

Breathe out and each work contains a history of the artist looking and observing for many, many years.

Look at the main sculpture Five Sticks, and your senses immediately trigger into non specific indigenous references, Tiwi pukamani poles, Javanese carvings and then our modern western tradition of Brancusi and Arp.

Twigg has spent a lifetime of inquiry and observation. This is evoked in the book we launch tonight, ‘Encountering the Object’ edited by Gina Fairley. Flicking through it alongside the substantial essays are images of Tony’s work sitting next to urban or rural photographs that echo the source and intent of the work.

Tonight we also congratulate and celebrate the contribution Gina Fairly, has made to Tony’s art practice. Since being in relationship with Gina there has been a shift in Twigg’s work, a calmness and repose echo in the lines and shapes.

When talking about Twigg’s journey we must also articulate his almost forensic research into the life and time of the artist Ian Fairweather in Asia.

From finding apartments he once stayed in; to landing on the beach where Fairweather’s raft was washed up, Twigg continues to make a valuable contribution to our knowledge of this great artist.

In return, Fairweather’s journey has allowed Tony to embark on his own quest as an Australian artist engaging in Asia.

As the exhibition title, Ricochet, suggests, you can see and feel this artist’s journey…..Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Singapore and now for the first time in many years, Sydney.

 

Tony Twigg

5 Sticks in any order (standing), 2004/10

Enamel on timber construction in 5 parts

265cm x 140cm x 130cm

PAUL MCGILLICK ON TONY TWIGG

AN EXCERPT FROM AN ESSAY IN THE BOOK
'TONY TWIGG, ENCOUNTERING THE OBJECT'

For Tony Twigg the journey (of his work) has been crucial in the way his work demonstrates an integrity of purpose over a long time, and in a very literal sense, namely his ceaseless travelling through Southeast Asia. But more interesting are the encounters along the way which have acted like lightning rods, moments of explosive concentrations of artistic insight, precipitating major shifts in the work. For Twigg, this movement has exposed him to culturally embedded visual experiences which helped him to make sense of what he had been trying to do before he began his travels.

With the timber constructions Twigg was aiming to create a single image that would stand for the entire story. 'I was looking,' he says, 'for a history that corresponded to an emotion... perhaps I didn't find it, but I found a city that did- Manila.' Living, working and exhibiting in Manila, the Australian narrative content was clearly no longer relevant, so Twigg abandoned the figurative element in his work and began working with abstraction. If this decision was triggered by a realisation that his earlier Australian narratives would not make sense to a Filipino audience, it was equally the result of his encounter with Filipino culture and beyond.

Twigg collects images as he moves through Asia, especially of the layering of materials such as bamboo on timber; that kind of arm wrestle between the organic and the urge to achieve some order. There is a tenuousness and provisionality about this built environment. Walls and fences are made up of loosely connected elements that seem to be permanently at the point of falling apart. The form, in other words, is a product of the materials at hand. In a similar way, Twigg's ovoid forms combine found eucalypt branches with off-cuts of milled timber in reductive compositions, which summarise his collected images.

Although Twigg abandoned figuration, the narrative and figurative hover fugitive and furtive in the background. The verticals have a 'portrait format' and we reads in heads, arms and legs. The are totemic in feel and conjure up visual memories of Cycladic art, Alberto Giacometti and David Smith. The ovoids, on the other hand, remind me of those transitional landscapes of Piet Mondrian, except that in Twigg's constructions the ovoid perimeters counteract the figurative.

Excerpt from Paul McGillick, "Material Encounter: The art of of Tony Twigg" published in
Tony Twigg: Encountering the Object, 2009.
Paul McGillick is Editor of Indesign and Habitus (Australia).   

To view work from the exhibition TONY TWIGG: RICOCHET 28 APRIL TO 22 MAY 2010, CLICK HERE

Tony Twigg:  The Accordian (small), 2010
oil paint on timber construction, 300 x 315 x 25mm