Bad Actors takes its cue from Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author. The play begins with the curtains raised and actors rehearsing a performance of Pirandello’s Mixing it Up. Part way through the rehearsals six mysterious characters arrive and claim they have a story that needs finishing. What follows calls into question the nature of reality? Karst (2019)

The first thing I noticed on entering the gallery space was the aesthetic of the work in the space as a whole. This impact primarily due to the use of bright colour, in addition three of the works were draped and suspended around the gallery in a non traditional way giving the collective work an immersive feeling and a subtle sense of a studio setting perhaps rather than that of a gallery. It appeared that some of the work had an unfinished quality laying bare the gesso beneath the surface or the chosen support. For me this allowed insight into the act of painting and less the narrative of artist’s intention.

I was particularly drawn to the work of Gillian Ayres and the heavy, loosely applied paint in which the artist’s movement could be seen. Gillian Ayres’s work underwent a change in direction as she consolidated her late style: a richly allusive and expressive abstraction in high keyed color. Karst (2019) The painting exhibited is exemplary of this change in Ayres work of the early eighties onward displaying visceral impasto and gestural mark making. I was curious about the title of the piece ‘The dance of the Ludi Magni’ but unable to find information to clarify this ,(Ayres) ‘did not discuss the meanings, if any, in her works. She insisted that she thought only about the shapes, the space and the colours’. (Sandomir, 2019) My impression is that Ayres was a painter making paintings about painting.

Bibliography

Sandomir, R. (2019). Gillian Ayres, 88, Dies; Abstract Artist’s Torch for Paint Was Gloriously Vivid. The New York Times, p.6.

Karst. (2019) Bad Actors Exhibition held at Karst, Plymouth 28 September – 09 November 2019 (Exhibition Catalogue)