TAKING SHAPE ON HENDERSON ROW

Submitted by Editor on Fri, 27/04/2018 - 12:00

 LAST CHANCE TO SEE APRIL EXHIBITION 

Contrasting but complementary work by three artists has been on show at the Lennon Art Gallery this month. 

Owner Alan Lennon’s paintings here are characteristically sculptural, delighting in rounded forms that recall the satisfying smoothness of sea-worn rocks. 

Themes of wholeness and completion recur in his work, giving a kind of tactile reality to otherwise nebulous human qualities such as aspiration, protection, reflection, and healing. My favourite of these was ‘Possession’ (below).

In this sequence, I enjoyed the rough brushstrokes of his human figures and their exaggeratedly swollen or foregrounded feet and hands, all set within or upon more formal geometries of squares, circles and arcs. These are arranged with considerable care and structural effectiveness suggestive of an ultimately ordered universe.

Six of Alan Martin’s seven abstract works in the exhibition are titled ‘Archaeology’.

Busy and ingeniously linked fragments fill the images. But fragments of what? Architecture? Machinery? Tools? Pumps or  pitheads? Crosses and crucifixes? Each viewer will bring their own experience to these excavations.

As you try to make sense of what’s agitating your eyes, take a moment to reflect on how cleverly Martin uses colour in these works to create different moods and levels of complexity. 

Step back, and enjoy how the works are subtly organised  in interlocking larger sections, more or less vertical divisions creating four or more related parts of the whole.

Finally, we come to Stephen Holmes – two of whose works are shown below simply because I liked them and they were easier to photograph on a dark day.

There’s a curious elegance and elasticity to Holmes’s figures, a taut springiness which I suspect is deliberately used in ‘Twylight of City Park’ to subvert the darker and more stilted northern cityscape of L.S. Lowry.

Painterly playfulness is also evident in the  supple work below. I have little confidence in the long-term prospects of Picasso’s peaceful dove.—AM

Taking Shape continues at the Lennon Art Gallery (83 Henderson Row) until at least the end of the month but quite possibly longer. Entry free.