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