Page 60 - Studio International - June 1966

what obscured the Piper who, for example, painted some
of the finest English abstracts of the 1930's, and it's good
to see him measuring his skill and intelligence against a
demandingly complex idiom again. Calling his drawings
Figure-eye and camera, he builds his composition out of
juxtaposed stages between treated photographic fragment
and the forms he extracts, or abstracts, from it. Certainly
the 'raw material', the nude herself, is unidealized, but
she is visibly transformed into the processes of 'art' in a
way which could only be called a loving tribute. Piper
hasn't looked so committed to visual fact, so free of the
picturesque, for years. Sharing the gallery with him are
Sidney Nolan and Ceri Richards, and the less said
about Nolan's inept excursion into figure-composition,
the better; either self-criticism or his dealers should have
told him never to exhibit his Vanity of Human Wishes trip-
tych. Some scenes of Antarctic and Australian wastelands
use slick technique to give hints of the artist's original gift
for evoking the timelessness of heroic landscape. Ceri
Richards's works are the extremely attractive, skilfully
professional, miniature versions he pours out in the wake
of larger-scale themes—mostly Cathédrale Engloutie and
Cerl Richards Cycle of nature 1964
Gouache 8 1/2 x 12 1/2 in. Marlborough New London Gallery Clair de Lune subjects. The basic creative effort of forging
a visual metaphor out of Debussyesque elements was
which just shows how the Mrs Whitehouse mentality is done long ago: these are just formal variations relying on
roused when a 'safe' artist tries extending his established an inventive technique to go on ringing changes on a
range (if he'd always been known for nudes instead of fruitful original idea. It is a tribute both to the validity of
churches there wouldn't have been a murmur). Piper as the idea and Richards's flow of invention that the series
the last of the English topographical tradition has some- so seldom flags in poetry, energy, or charm.
q

Prize winners at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Open which won first prize, and, right, Justin Knowles' 1966-1 1966,
Painting Exhibition held in Belfast this May- oil on canvas, 42 x 42 in., which was awarded second prize.
left, Richard Lin's Painting relief 1963, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 in., The third prize was given to John Hoyland.