The Union Gallery's Christmas Exhibition features a mixture of new and familiar works by artists whose works have shown here before over the past three-and-a-half years.
It's an unashamedly upbeat and approachable collection, which should do well as customers decide either to treat friends or to ride out the recession by ignoring them and staying indoors with something beautiful on the wall. Described below are a few personal favourites.
Two works by Sophie McKay Knight catch the eye at once. 'Return Before Midnight' (right) features a determined-looking Cinderella single-mindedly in pursuit of her prince. There is a certain shrewdness about the eyes, a kind of savagery in her application of warpaint, which deliciously undercuts the sugary innocence of most retellings. Printed fragments from the story are faintly traced across her throat and breast, underlining the difference between one's expectation and her reality.
Similar palimpsests are used more explicitly in 'Star' (below). Here, in a kind of 1930s Hollywood 'Rake's Progress', another, daubed female bears on her shoulder, in descending order, the words: purity; high-souled; desire, passing; sweetness; happiness; fornication; malevolence. In neither painting is the character immediately endearing, but they are still shown with a degree of generosity. Knight's honest account, and the proximity with which she allows the viewer to observe the viewed, mean one cannot help but share a kind of one-sided physical intimacy – a process which inevitably evokes a sense of shared humanity and fallibility.
[img_assist|nid=3566|title=|desc=|link=node|align=middle|width=485|height=640]
Intriguing and delightful are four circular paintings by Olivia Irvine. Created in oil and egg tempera with the aid of a convex mirror, they show four views of an attic space populated by chairs, books, and an open door. The lack of people, the unfocused camera on the tripod, and the enigmatic repetition of 'Farewell Suite' in the titles give the pieces an affectionate but slightly melancholy feel, warmed by the the light flooding in and the rosey-coloured carpet and furnishings. Why the use of the mirror? I'm not sure. I suppose it nods to the very different treatment of detail, focus and interior reflection in van Eyck and Vermeer, but it also suggests an inward-looking optic – a lens through which to capture time and memory.
[img_assist|nid=3562|title=|desc=|link=node|align=middle|width=639|height=640]
Back in July, this reviewer abandoned any pretence of expertise and instead expressed 'jaw-gaping admiration' for Dylan Lisle's technique as a painter. Then, I was referring largely to the sumptuous sensuality of his colours. Now, I am equally bowled over, but this time by his restrained use of charcoal in 'Seated Study' (below).
[img_assist|nid=3563|title=|desc=|link=node|align=middle|width=640|height=640]
However odd or specialist it may sound, I enjoyed the exquisitely clenched toes.
Kevin Low's 'Her Father's Things', available in a limited edition of ten, is characteristically odd, haunting, and begging to have a story told about it. The fragile vibrancy of the porcelain, the apparently even more fragile sanity of the girl, and the unexplained absence of father create a narrative uncertainty, an unsettling but pleasurable disquiet.
[img_assist|nid=3564|title=|desc=|link=node|align=middle|width=534|height=640]
No such tension exists in the three fabulous miniature kimonos by Barbara Franc. Crafted from recycled tin and wire, they are perfectly still, astonishingly detailed, mounted behind glass like irridescent beetles. 'Rose-sleeved Kimono' appears below.
[img_assist|nid=3565|title=|desc=|link=node|align=middle|width=639|height=640]
Also on display here are two works by Janet Melrose, 'Sleeping under the Stars' and 'Meeting of Ideas' – among the best of her joint exhibition earlier this year – and 'The Pool' by Drummond Mayo, all inexplicably unsold but not for long one suspects. AM
[The Christmas Exhibition continues in the Union Gallery at 45 Broughton Street until 23 December.]