joseph scissorhands: Abstract Colour

Gillian Ayres - Astrophil and Stella, 1982-83

"In Abstract Colour, we have highlighted Gillian Ayres' practice to punctuate each chapter in this exhibition, in conjunction with other artists working towards similar artistic concerns. Each artist uses their work to tell stories and express emotional planes experienced while making. While one's reaction to colour cannot be generalised, colour can function as a universal language and entry point to begin conversations around our own thoughts and feelings." - Lewis Dalton Gilbert.

A really enjoyable survey this of contemporary abstract artists based around the busy, colourful works of Gillian Ayres (1930 - 2018). Colour is such a huge part of the art and design experience. Creatives have used it for generations to create moods, or invoke psychological or physiological effects in the viewer. With so many hues and shades of individual colours to choose from using colour can be a daunting prospect. As an artist myself, I formerly felt personally intimidated by colour, choosing instead to focus on other formal elements like line and form, creating work primarily in black and white. It was a pleasure then to see the abandon with which the artists here employ the variety of hues in the across the whole spectrum in their work. Many artists use colour in a systematic way applying their own ideologies and sets of rules to colour theory in their work. Others use colour in a more spontaneous, instinctual manner. Each colour has its own characteristics and associations attached to it depending on whatever culture or context it is viewed from. I enjoyed seeing how each artist employed colour as an exploration of their own personal abstract visual language which was variously formal and geometric, or loose and painterly. There were bold statements expressing the joys of the beauty of the full spectrum of the colour palette, and there were other darker, more tonal nuanced works. It was a pleasure to see the inclusion of ceramics in this exhibition. I was unaware of this aspect of Gillian Ayres' oeuvre, and liked the solid, bulbous forms that she created. Nicola Tassie's works here were my favourite of the ceramicists though. I enjoyed the subtle tonal harmonies in her palette, and the sense of pattern in her mark-making. Having worked for a longer period, Ayres' work (quite rightly) does tend to dominate the show however, Ayres is so assured in her mark-making, colour choices and complex compositions. I have developed a new found appreciation of her work.