Callum Innes: Modern Art Oxford (From The Oxford Times)

Callum Innes: Modern Art Oxford

11:56am Thursday 15th February 2007

• Print
• Email
• Share

Once more the Upper Gallery of Modern Art Oxford has been transformed - this time it's paintings by the acclaimed Scottish artist Callum Innes in violet and black that dominate this space and make their mark against the stark white walls.

Callum came into prominence in the early 1990s and belongs to a generation of British artists who continue to explore the various ways paint can work on canvas. His paintings, which are the result of repeated application and removal of paint from the canvas, are often admired for their enigmatic and meditative quality. Many suggest they have a deep spiritual quality too. Callum admits they have been created to work on many levels - emotionally, physically, figuratively and politically - but adds that the magic is reduced if he explains too much about them. So, to a certain extent, it is up to us to decide just which qualities any particular work displays.

The paintings in the main gallery (Exposed Painting Dioxazine Violet 2006), which are his most recent works, begin with one colour. This is applied from left to right with sweeping brushstrokes until the canvas is thick with paint. He then changes brushes, puts away the paint and begins working with turpentine and either gently washes the paint away from one side to expose an entire section of the canvas or transforms it with vertical lines, so that the bands of thickly applied pigment contrast with thin liquid stripes. Although paint has been removed in this action, the components of the painting that have vanished during the process of dissolution still have something to say as his paintings carry within them the evidence that something has disappeared. To produce the five paintings of this series we see in this exhibition, Callum created 16 canvases, 11 of which will never be displayed as he pushed too far when he reached the moment of chaos that comes during the making of his paintings.

The show covers the past 15 years and so reveals how his work has diversified over time. Examples of Identified Forms, Isolated Forms, Repetitions, Monologues, Resonances and pieces worked five years ago in shellac (a brittle or flaky secretion of the lac insect Coccus lacca, found in the forests of Assam and Thailand) are all displayed. The result he obtains in the untitled picture featuring shellac is quite remarkable. It comes about by drawing on the oppositional qualities of shellac and paint to make luminously associative imagery. While the dark spots in this work appear to be as randomly dispersed as anything Jackson Pollock may have produced, they are in fact carefully manipulated into place - and to great effect.

Callum Innes: From Memory, continues until Sunday, April 15. The artist will be in conversation with Fiona Bradley, the director of the Fruitmarket Gallery, at Modern Art Oxford on Thursday, March 8. For further details (including times) visit www.modernartoxford.org.uk

• Print
• Email
• Share