Recently on at The New Zealand Steel Gallery: December 2008
'My World' by Jim Ayers
This exhibition is different because of its rare content: Jim has a collection of work spanning from 1940 right up until today. There are hundreds of working drawings to accompany the large paintings giving the visitor a rare insight into how the artist develops his ideas on paper and resolves his concept in the finish work.
In his exhibition the viewer will also be able to see the development and experimentation over many decades. It is so rare to be able to follow the path and see where an artist has taken different paths and in some cases gone back into his archive to retrieve earlier skills and techniques to re-implement and create new work from the old.
Many of the artworks would have been very daring and outspoken in their social commentary in their day, which may account for Jim still having some controversial works in his possession.
It is fascinating that so many of his bold statements and sharp remarks are still relevant today, making his work excellent for opening up debate about how far New Zealand has really come.
History will be revisited in this exhibition through two ways; the first in the subject matter, Jim has documented many key events that shaped the country's identity and secondly through the way he works, he went to Art School in the 1940's and it is very evident in his processes how artist were once trained to communicate.
For all who are interested in art, this exhibition will definitely be educational in its lay-out, it is like an Art Book on the walls of a gallery.
Artist: Jim Ayers
Retrospective Exhibition
FACT Gallery
Reviewed by Peter Le Fevre.
Pukekohe
December 2008-12-15
It is fashionable in contemporary times for professional artists to exhibit publicly before they have even completed there basic training at art school. The hazard of this is that this inexperienced and young artist often does not have sufficient life experience to say much and the exercise, risks becoming all style and little content. It is therefore a moment of importance when an artist exhibits retrospectively after 60 years in the business.
One cannot but be admiring of a man who has consistently produced art work over such a protracted period. There are many distractions along the road that prevent most graduates of art schools from forging a successful art career and it is the tenacious and exceptional who run the course. The visual arts Muse is demanding and unforgiving, ruthlessly peeling away the less than dedicated.
Jim Ayers is a product of Canterbury Art School at a time when this was the only art school in New Zealand. He trained under the tutelage of Bill Sutton and Russell Clarke, hence the strong influence of the Canterbury Landscape painters.
The earliest works on exhibition are two oil on canvas paintings that speak strongly of British Post-Impressionism with its muted colours and thick impasto brush marks. Conservative responses to a young landscape. A colonialist's response to filter the new world through the eyes of the old. There was limited exposure to contemporary modernist art, few publications and less by way of exhibition. Works such as 'Looking West' (1946), a view of Christchurch station display a trained eye with a strong compositional sense. There is nothing startling or original in either style or content but the work speaks volumes about colonial affiliations and isolation.
It is only later in his career, after exposure to a travelling exhibition of British moderns reached Christchurch that Ayers became aware of the avant-garde approaches of artists such as Graham Sutherland. A viewing of this exhibition becomes an interesting journey through the history of New Zealand art.
We see the illustrative qualities of the almost social realist approaches of the 40's and 50's paintings through to the extraordinary influence Colin McCahon. To limit your response to charting the progression of art in this country for 6 decades is to do a disservice to the artist and his personal vision. We are all influenced by history but the fascination lies in individual's unique response to it.
Ayer is definitely a strong landscapist and the most successful works are the straightforward and honest responses to this. 'Lonely Beach' (2006) is a composite, construct of the artist's emotional response to beach experiences. Despite some viewers claiming they know exactly which beach this is, the artist has invented an image which speaks of many beaches and many visual experiences, composed to distil the essence of the experience. This is one of the keys to Ayers approach, he doesn't work en plein air but rather visits and re-visits the subject matter until he is familiar with it and then returns to the studio to paint his subjective response to it. This method relies on a well honed eye and results in us the viewers having the privilege of sharing the artist's subjective response to the landscape.
On exhibition are a series of 'protest' paintings, these are a group of canvases emanating from the artists strong emotional response to politicised disasters such as the Erebus cover up and the fallout from the Springbok rugby tour. In these works the artist speaks of the local socio-political climate of the time and his personal response. While these works are strong compositionally, the style adopted tends towards the graphic design of the period and their lightness belies the seriousness of these occurrences on the Kiwi psyche. Ayer's response is local and while locally valuable, does not speak of a universal experience of grief or anger. This is the Achilles heel of his response, highlighted by one work dealing with the 9/11 incident. It is this work dealing with visual images so familiar to the international community where Ayers does not succeed. He is reliant on secondary material and therefore a pre-selected and filtered response that is not entirely his, nor unique. This method of working undermines the artist's works that include the human figure, reducing the individual to a symbol and lessening the impact. It is at this point where Ayers does a disservice to his heartfelt expression and the works are reduced to illustrations rather than the strong experiences they could be.
The weakest moment in the exhibition are the collaged constructions of found objects.Ayers is a strong painter and these forays into a sculptural response detract from a successful exhibition and perhaps should remain studio experiments to be resolved before becoming public.
This is an important exhibition that deserves to be viewed with time and care. Sixty years of communication deserves the respect of time and effort of intelligent viewing. FACT is to be congratulated on bringing this artist to our attention.
Peter Le Fevre.