HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GLOW?

Up the Garden Path, with the phrase’s suggestion of wasted effort, is an odd title for the latest show at the Union Gallery on Broughton Street. Far from offering disappointments, this summery joint exhibition – themed loosely on what grows, crawls, hunts or flits close to but outside our homes – is of uniformly high standard. Four personal highlights are mentioned here.

I can't resist beginning with the contrary originality of Joyce Gunn Cairns, from whose oil and pencil depiction of a slinkily wandering cat the exhibition draws its name. There follow several studies of crows which, I suppose, may at least be found outside, but that’s where any real connection between Cairns and the garden theme ends. 

Who cares! Her ‘Two Turtle Doves’ (top-right) is a typically sensitive reflection on self-image and others’ love. Paired romantic birds are seen in a mirror image, but presumably sit perched where we the onlookers stand, ghostly presences in the back of the subject’s mind. I love Cairns’s familiar choice of muted greys and blues and oranges, was intrigued by how – unexpectedly – these appear more intensely in the mirror image than in ‘reality’, and amused also by the self-absorbed indifference of the cat in the corner. Like many of her paintings, this is a clue-laden invitation to consider; unlike many of them, it has a modest contentedness about it which I found touching.

I’ve written before in praise of Cathy Campbell’s shimmering thickenings of light into form, the objects of her interest suspended in the act of becoming between surface and air (Breaking news, 10.3.12). ‘Little Cacti’ (right) is very much in this vein, and – despite Campbell’s past protestations to the contrary – seems in the proximity and posture of the plants’ arrangement to make some statement about a possible human relationship. The work is technically brilliant in ways which I lack knowledge and vocabulary to explain, and – for all its small size – radiantly captivating.

Jenny Matthews’s ‘You Have Reached Your Destination I’ (below) is an agreeable mystery. I don’t understand the title, and I’m not sure from what perspective I am meant to believe it. Perhaps I am viewing the sky from below and looking straight up. The insects and unexplained (artist's?) ink blots in the foreground are already being drawn up into a huge swirl of air and cloud which will carry them higher than they have ever been before. The destination, then, is this starting point of an epiphany. Alternatively, I think, perhaps I am viewing the sky from a great height and looking straight down. The insects and ink blots in the foreground have been drawn up by a huge swirl of air and cloud which will shortly leave them stranded here, higher than they have ever been before. The destination, by this reading, is a point of giddying vulnerability. Alternatively, perhaps the airy vortex (like the faintly discernible printed ducks on its curves) is merely decorative; after all, a similar shape appears in ‘On the Wing’ with no attempt at realism. I don’t know what to think. I've given up, and instead simply enjoy the ambiguities, relish the sketchily rendered fragile bodies.

My favourite piece in the exhibition is ‘The Garden Path’ by Olivia Irvine. To my mind, it conveys a summer night thick with scents: wafted woodbine spices, no doubt, and the musk of the roses blown. Here she uses oil and egg tempera to balance pinks and purples, lilacs, blues and greens – and their softly rounded combination on this large canvas (120 x 80cms) positively glows.   AM

Up the Garden Path continues at the Union Gallery (45 Broughton Street) until 1 July. 

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