John Walker: 'New Paintings' At Ikon, Birmingham

John Walker, 'Still Life I', Oil on Canvas, 2018

I was over in Birmingham recently, visiting my friend Andrew Smith, and found myself at Ikon, reacquainting myself with the paintings of John Walker, after nearly four decades.

Birmingham-born Walker seemed to have garnered quite a lot of favourable attention, around the time I was studying Fine Art, in the early 1980s.  And yet, as an abstract painter -  and one whose work was largely landscape-derived, it also felt like artistic fashion was fast leaving him behind.  Behind his roughly scumbled brushwork and clotted surfaces, and despite the suggestion of recessive or theatrical illusionistic space, in his work - the fact remained that Walker was rooted in the essential language of formal abstraction.  In 1982, when I was hesitantly moving in a similar direction, that could often feel like the increasingly obsolete language of a previous generation.

John Walker, 'Recent Paintings', January 2020

John Walker, (R) 'Passage', 2015 & (L) 'Ripple', 2017, Oil On Canvas

John Walker, (R) 'Nomad II', 2018 & (L) 'Looking In', 2017, Oil On Canvas 

A year earlier, Norman Rosenthal's massive 'A New Spirit In Painting' survey at The Royal Academy had laid down a pretty unmissable marker.  It covered a wide gamut of styles, and included not a few established names.  However, the message was still pretty clear: if painting was to contradict the 'painting is dead' brigade, in a world where photography and Conceptualism had apparently claimed the future - it wouldn't be by extending the legacy of Modernist abstraction, apparently.  I remember trudging round the Academy, wanting to be pleased by the sheer quantity of painting on offer, and yet simultaneously perplexed that there was so little of kind of stuff I had begun to identify with.  Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Delaunay, and assorted Cubists and colour-field painters, were my newly-found heroes -  but now, no one else seemed particularly interested in them.  Expressionism was definitely a thing, but it was the figurative, German kind - not the American abstract variety.  The figure definitely trumped landscape, where subject or sources were concerned.

John Walker, 'St John's Bay Red, Yellow, Blue', Oil On Canvas, 2011-18 (Detail Below)

Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it's now possible to see how I was there, just as painting had taken an official right-turn into what became labelled Post Modernism.  At the age of 19, however, I rather lacked the perspective to appreciate that - taking it all rather too personally, instead - I fear.   When I discovered Walker, in the library of Bristol Polytechnic's Arts Campus, shortly afterwards, I was pleased to find a contemporary abstractionist of the kind I wanted to affirm, but equally disappointed to note he was already resorting to depicting skulls alongside his trademark folded planes.  They felt like corny shorthand for some synthetic, non-specific angst - and like he was suddenly trying to play catch-up, with a spot of fashionable cartoon voodoo.   And that was pretty much the last time I thought much about him - until I walked into Ikon, with Andrew, 38 years later.  

John Walker, 'Fishing With Tom And Les', Oil On Canvas, 2017

John Walker, 'Lowe Lode', Oil On Canvas, 2019

Well, the good news is, the skulls are gone (although replaced by the occasional cut-out fish), the language is once more, resolutely abstract, and the overall context - clearly landscape derived.  Ironically, though, it's now me that has come to accept that the natural landscape (be it Cornish coastline, or American desert), isn't really my subject at all - and that painting in its pure sense, isn't even really my first language any more.  But, enough about me - this is supposed to be about John Walker's painting.  This deep into his career (and indeed - his life) there seems to be some vindication, in this late work, of the idea of sticking to one's guns, or at least reconnecting with one's original motivations.

John Walker, (R) 'John's Bay Pollution', 2017 & (L) 'Ripple', 2017, Oil On Canvas 

As for the paintings themselves, there's clearly no lack of confidence or assertion there.  Walker evokes his current adopted home environment, on the New England coast, with a vocabulary of crudely-daubed  angular waveforms, parallel bands, wonky chequerboard grids, truncated ellipses, and those occasional dangling fish motifs.  Although distinctly maritime, the palette is bold and direct, sometimes reverting to a monochrome (or something close-to) scheme of largely unmixed colour - often contrasting with clean whites, and with an impact that might be described as emblematic.  There's a distinct echo of Jasper Johns or even Frank Stella in all those repeating rhythms of lines and alternating stripes - although they're being employed here for far more imitative, and far less conceptual reasons, it should be recognised.

John Walker, 'Tidal Change', Oil On Canvas, 2017

John Walker, 'Place', Oil On Canvas, 2018

For, what Walker is actually doing, is to both distill and compile his landscape experience into a collision of separate glimpses and impressions.  This is the kind of simultaneity first devised by Cezanne, before being fully capitalised upon by Braque, Picasso, and the subsequent waves of Cubists, who followed them.  It also feels related in some way (albeit - with far less west coast shimmer, or refined elegance) to Diebenkorn's distillations of a coastal landscape.  Actually, a more apposite connection might be with a painter like Peter Lanyon, whose synthesis of the Cornish landscape famously came from swooping over it in gliders, and whose energetic, looping calligraphy and sweeping painterly gestures captured, within them, both time and motion.  Like Lanyon, Walker eschews the horizontal skyline (the portrait orientation of these canvases is no accident), and all those repeating stripes and zig-zags must surely chart the endless rhythm of waves, possibly observed on separate tides, and subject to varying marine temperaments. 

However, whilst Lanyon's best work appears to soar above his coast in a vortex of light, weather, and free movement, these paintings by Walker describe a far more rugged, and possibly constrained, situation.  The geometry may be wonky, but it's structural nonetheless - suggesting perhaps the funnelling of ocean tides between harbour walls, jetties or quaysides.  Walker may evoke the sea, but he appears to do so with his feet firmly on dry land.

John Walker, 'Nomad I', Oil On Canvas, 2018

Another feature which strikes me is his almost wilfully careless approach to paint application, along with the stark economy of much of this work.  In Lanyon, there is often a veiling of colours, or a kind of overwriting of marks, however rapidly they may have been laid down.  However, in many cases, Walker's marks appear to be the first and only thing he put down, before simply moving on to the next, equally slapdash statement.  In this situation, it's the accumulation, and the method in which those marks are all packed into the overall composition, which give the painting its sense of gravity.  In this respect, the paintings remind me of the way Patrick Heron's late garden paintings became comprised of hastily-sketched, and increasingly insubstantial, notations for the plants he wanted to describe - whereas he might have once immersed the viewer in lush fields of unbroken colour.

John Walker, 'Nomad II', Oil On Canvas, 2018

Is this something that happens to certain painters as they work on into old age - I wonder?  Does the urgency to still make paintings press up against the dwindling away of the time remaining in which to do so?  If I'm honest, the lack of tension in so many of Walker's marks, or concern over their perceived 'quality', disappointed me rather on first viewing.  First impressions can, of course be deceptive, but even now, I find these canvases far more pleasing when viewed across the room, or even - as here, in miniature reproduction.  In either case, a degree of internal tension returns as the image becomes more condensed upon the retina.  If his direct, unmodulated attack, represents a thoroughly courageous, and unselfconscious method of painting (as it certainly does), my own, rather more weaselly sensibilities are still drawn more towards those canvases upon  which a degree of layering, modulation, or visible over-painting has occurred.

John Walker, 'Stern View', 2017, Oil on Canvas

John Walker, 'Black Paint', Oil On Canvas, 2015 (Detail Below)

John Walker, 'John's Bay Pollution', Oil On Canvas, 2017 (Detail Below)

Perhaps then, John Walker is one of those artists with whose work I'm destined to always have a slightly strained relationship, (despite approving of it whole-heartedly, in principle).  Perhaps it's just a question of commitment.  Walker seemingly wields his brush with the minimum of hesitation or concern for the crippling niceties of painting.  He also pushed on through the vicissitudes of fashion, and inconvenient Art History, to pursue his core vision, regardless.  I, on the other hand, gave up even trying to be anything as noble or straightforward as a pure painter, some years ago.


John Walker: 'Recent Paintings', continues until 23 February, at Ikon, 1 Oozells Square, Birmingham, B1 2HS

'A New Spirit In Painting', ran from 15 January - 18 March 1981, at: The Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1S 3ET

'Somewhat Abstract' At Nottingham Contemporary 1

Nottingham Contemporary, April 2014

I was based in Nottingham for a couple of days over the Easter break, so took the opportunity to drop into Nottingham Contemporary’s latest major exhibition, ‘Somewhat Abstract: Selections From The ArtsCouncil Collection’.  I’ve come to associate The Contemporary with this type of mixed show, in which widely disparate works are assembled around an overriding theme, foregrounding the processes of curation along with those of the artists on display.

In this case, the show focuses on a looser interpretation of Abstraction than merely as a definition of the visually non-representational.  As the title indicates, it draws from the Art’s Council collection of (mostly) post-war British art, and includes plenty of work that is nominally representational or primarily conceptual across a range of media and identifiable traditions.  It’s main agenda would seem to be to question what happens at the edges of abstraction, and those points where the recognisable begins its transformation into something other.  Clearly, this may occur through visual/plastic manipulation, but also, through conceptual processes of abstract thought, formal theory or established ideology.  Impressively, the show gives roughly equal weight to all these modes.

Cynics might object that the real motivation behind such exhibitions is to fill gallery space with whatever is easily (and cheaply?), available and can be assembled around a catch-all theme.  However, I do enjoy the opportunity they often provide to make thought-provoking connections or alternative interpretations, and to make new discoveries.  That is certainly true of this show and it includes several of the latter for me, along with some old friends.  It’s also worth noting that in a genuinely trans-media exhibition, and an era when Conceptualism is often prioritised, painting is rather well represented here.

Enamel, Vegetable & Mineral

‘Somewhat Abstract’ fills all four of The Contemporary’s galleries and I spent several happy hours in there, (punctuated by refreshment breaks on its sunny terrace).  The work is distributed around the separate spaces according to distinct shared concerns, and one could focus on each quite satisfyingly over repeat visits.  I found some of these curated sub-themes slightly more convincing than others and, with time on my hands, was content to immerse myself in the show as a whole.  I made various connections of my own as I went along; returning to spend more time with those works that particularly intrigued me.  As they were numerous, I’ll highlight the paintings here, and deal with work in other media in a subsequent post.

John Hoyland, 'Red Over Yellow 18-9-73', Acrylic On Canvas, 1973

John Hoyland, ‘Red Over Yellow 18-9-73’, Acrylic On Canvas, 1973:  The work of British painter, John Hoyland seems lost in time these days, (Art Historically, at least).  His muscular paintings from the 1970s represent the very end of an American tradition of ‘heroic’, painterly abstraction, and of many of the assumptions about painting that were about to be swept aside by a changing zeitgeist.

Not being a believer in sacrificing babies at bath time, I’m often intrigued by much overlooked work from that period, and being confronted by a painting like this makes me forget the official accounts altogether.  An expansive field of primary red extends across most of the large canvas, revealing fragments of underlying yellow and bordered by a narrow frame of browns, crimson and purple.  To stand before it is a gloriously immersive experience, not unlike that gained from a good Rothko, but Hoyland’s approach is less neurotic and far more extrovert.  The energetically knifed and unctuously dripping paint reveals a delight in its gestural plasticity and delivers a lesson in how to make adjacent, closely related colours vibrate.

Peter Lanyon, 'Soaring Flight', Oil On Canvas, 1960

Peter Lanyon, ‘Soaring Flight’, Oil On Canvas, 1960:  I mentioned Lanyon, (featuring this particular painting), in a post following my short break in Cornwall, earlier this year.  He’s a favourite post-war Cornish painter of mine, (and, unusually, - a native).  This is one of his best, and it was an unexpected pleasure to walk around a corner and find it waiting for me in Nottingham.  Like Hoyland, Lanyon represented a typically mid-20th Century approach to painterly abstraction, but applied it to the elemental qualities of the Cornish landscape.

Lanyon projected his experience of gliding into images that amalgamate the realms of earth, air, water and light, and locate the viewer amongst them in a dynamic manner.  There’s no such thing as a fixed viewpoint here as Lanyon’s energetic brushwork describes his glider’s zig-zag progress through the air.  Meanwhile, the moving cloud, (or shadow), diagonally veiling almost half of the canvas is both exciting and compositionally audacious.

Prunella Clough, 'Waterford Yard', Oil On Canvas, 1970

Prunella Clough:  A definite pleasure of ‘Somewhat Abstract’ is its showcasing of several paintings by Prunella Clough.  I often forget about Clough, only to find myself intrigued by her work when I encounter it in municipal collections.  One of her introverted pieces in isolation can lose out to louder voices, and they benefit from being hung in groups, as here.

Prunella Clough, 'South-West Nocturne', Oil On Canvas, 1970

Clough is a straightforward enough fit for this show, with her consistent exploration of the boundary between the identifiable world and the abstract painterly environment.  There’s something terminally ‘British’ about her tonal palette and general mutedness, but I always respond to her use of urban or industrial sources, flattening of forms and consistent emphasis on surface.

Prunella Clough, 'Perforated Fragment', Oil On Canvas, 1985

‘Waterford Yard’, Oil On Canvas, 1970:  Clearly derived from a distinct location, this painting pushes Clough's subject to the very edge of purely formal abstraction, allowing a few observed features to emerge as flattened shapes from atmospheric darkness.

Prunella Clough, 'Samples', Oil On Canvas, 1997

'Somewhat Abstract' (Prunella Clough Paintings In Situ), Nottingham Contemporary,  April 2014

‘Samples’, 1997; ‘South West-Nocturne’, 1970; ‘Perforated Fragment’, 1985; All Oil On Canvas:  Separated by 27 years but forming a pleasing trio, these push things even further into shape and mark-based abstraction, each exuding a subdued elegance, typical of Clough's oeuvre.  They instantly reminded me of the entropic architectural surfaces I was photographing just a few minutes earlier on my way to the exhibition.  ‘Samples’ and ‘South-West Nocturne’ also demonstrate how beautifully slightly heightened colour fragments can sing from more neutral overall surroundings.

Frank Auerbach, 'Primrose Hill', Oil On Board, 1959

Frank Auerbach, ‘Primrose Hill’, Oil On Board, 1959:  Another interesting strand within the overall exhibition is the inclusion of paintings by Walter Sickert, David Bomberg and Frank Auerbach.  Famously, each taught the next, passing a baton of traditional representational painting that became increasingly abstracted through the physicality of paint application, without ever sacrificing the primacy of subject.

There are three Auerbach’s in the show, (including a terrific portrait etching of Lucian Freud), but this one is my favourite.  It’s an early, largely brown example, from the days when, apparently, he couldn’t afford a wide range of colours in the quantities needed to build his massively impasted paintings.  It reinforces my feeling that Auerbach’s obsessive attempts to carve space and form through sculptural paint and sheer force of will, are far better suited to landscape subjects than the figure.  It’s all deeply obscure, but I still feel I could walk down the hill, through all that unctuous gravy, towards the distant building emerging from the  nocturnal gloom.

Francis Bacon, 'Head VI', Oil On Canvas, 1949

Francis Bacon, ‘Head VI’, Oil On Canvas, 1949:  If I’m honest, I sometimes find Bacon a bit overrated.  There’s no doubt he produced many powerful images, but there are some fairly lame, poorly constructed ones out there too.  Whether or not he eventually became self-parodic, this famous early picture is a concentrated example of his work in its power to affect, and undiluted shock value.  In translating Velasquez’s 1650 portrait of Innocent X into the image of an eyeless screaming Pontiff, Bacon created a perfect symbol of human tragedy or lost faith, and an icon of post-war Existentialism.

Bacon was pretty dismissive of abstract painting, although his work often employs passages of suspended description to interesting psychological effect.  Here, the figure is confined within a trademark artificial space frame and subsumed within an ambiguous abstracted void.  I guess Existentialism could be described as a philosophical abstraction, although it sometimes feels pretty real to me.

Tomma Abts, 'Heit', Acrylic & OIl On Canvas, 2011

Tomma Abts, ‘Heit’, Acrylic & Oil On Canvas, 2011:  When German-born Tomma Abts won the 2006 Turner Prize, some trumpeted ‘a return to painting’.  That seems typically superficial, but the award did at least validate painting as a live issue, alongside the wide range of other media available to 21st century artists.  More interesting than the promotion of one medium over any other, is the way that Abts repurposes certain tropes of abstract painting tradition to illustrate that, nowadays, everything is up for grabs.

Painted across two adjacent canvases, ‘Heit’, shares the same modest dimensions and the general appearance of geometric Constructivism or Op Art, seen in all her art.  Paradoxically, Abts constructs such works organically, without prior planning, accumulating the textural marks of corrections and alterations beneath their final surfaces.  She also introduces illusionistic shadows, (as here), creating considerable internal tension as the final painting pulls in three different  directions at once.

Keith Coventry, 'Crack City', Oil On Canvas, 1993 (2 Of 4)

Keith Coventry, ‘Crack City’, Oil On Canvas, 1993:  Like Abts, Coventry pastiches the style of high Modernism here, in a set of four, repeated reworkings of Malevich’s white-on-white Supremacist square.  His agenda is highly conceptual however, and reimagines/retitles the squares as the footprints of housing blocks in London’s notorious Woodpecker Estate.  It’s an arch comment on the legacy of Utopian Modernism’s damaged legacy that, admittedly, relies on knowledge of the estate’s dysfunctional reputation.  Like the small bronze crack pipe sculpture displayed alongside, it also alludes to the hard drug addict’s abstract disengagement from everyday experience.

Zebedee Jones, 'Blue/Green', Oil & Wax On Canvas, 1993

Zebedee Jones, ‘Blue/Green’, Oil & Wax On Canvas, 1993:  I know nothing about Jones’ work, (beyond what a quick online search reveals), so this piece called to me, purely on its own terms.  It’s clearly in the tradition of the painted monochrome, and of conceptual painting about process and the medium’s specific properties.  I’m still a sucker for this kind of self-reflexivity and, whilst it lacks the sumptuous spectacle of Jason Martin’s work in a similar field, I enjoyed its nuanced surface and somewhat sullen demeanour.  I also love the way its internal content transcends the edges of the canvas creating an energised, ragged interaction with surrounding space.

Varda Caivano, 'Untitled', Oil On Canvas, 2011

Varda Caivano, ‘Untitled’, Oil On Canvas, 2011:  This is another, rather modest, blue-green painting by an artist I don’t really know.  It could have become lost amongst the surrounding work, but something about it called me back for repeated views.  Filled with an accumulation of insubstantial shapes, it seems to share the sense of an ambiguous but navigable environment, (albeit with difficulty), that I enjoyed in the Auerbach already mentioned.  Accumulations of scrubby, translucent paint, and chinks of revealed, contrasting colour between larger shapes, introduce breathing space into what might otherwise be a claustrophobic experience.

It pleases me that ‘Somewhat Abstract’ introduced me to two interesting painters of whom I had no previous knowledge, amongst some acknowledged big names and relatively familiar images.  It’s also intriguing (and illuminating of the current cultural situation) that work which might have emerged at any point over the last hundred years, (for example, in the case of Abts and Caivano), was actually produced within the last decade.

Nottingham Contemporary, April, 2014

‘Somewhat Abstract: Selections From The Arts Council Collection’, Continues until 29 June 2014 at: Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB.