Page 51 - Studio International - February 1972

marks, but they also served to twist and 'stretch'
the frontal character of the picture plane.
Occasionally the grids were interrupted by an
empty space which implied a shape that had not
actually been painted in. This destroyed the flat
precision of the designs and introduced an
alarming and disorienting spatial ambiguity.
It was like a hole in a map and created a sense
of potential depth.
Prentice is an extremely honest and
intellectually thorough artist. Unfortunately
however, his pictures offer the spectator too
insistent an opportunity for rational analysis.
Their mechanistic logic and static forms inhibit
a closely felt, intuitive response and draw a
screen between the spectator and what are (one
senses) the artist's own closely felt, intuitive
intentions.
Both Hitchmough and Prentice are
traditional artists in the sense that they work in
studios and produce art objects which hang on
walls. The members of GASP (Games of
Art for Spectator Participation) came together
because they wanted to get out of the studio
situation which, they felt, limited them to
creating a certain class of objects that had to be
presented in a certain manner. It prevented
them from communicating directly with an
audience.
The group was formed by three fine art
students, Rob Con, Julian Dunn and Harry
Henderson, in 197o when they were in the
second year of a Dip AD course at
For some years his work has offered few direct, His exhibition last autumn at Ikon Gallery Wolverhampton Polytechnic. They are now
figurative allusions to the 'real' world. In his showed some interesting stylistic developments. halfway through a post-graduate course in
youth he painted industrial landscapes and For one thing, 'specific objects or events' put in sculpture at Birmingham Polytechnic and won
studies of traffic movement. A later series of a new appearance. Most of the canvases on a prize at last year's Northern Young
rich, glazed-green, semi-abstract canvases were display were triangular and their association Contemporaries in Manchester. Their work
inspired by moving landscapes seen through a with sailing yachts was reinforced by the notes falls into two, not easily reconcilable
car window. But they were as much concerned in the catalogue. (Stuart Mills, editor of the categories—participatory games for children
with a total, 'all-over' field of vision as they Tarasque Press in Nottingham, contributed a (and for adults in pubs) and stylized ritual
were with the representational elements it flimsy dedicatory poem, The Sail, the Georgian performances.
contained. overtones of which recalled John Masefield.) When GASP first staged a children's event
The idea of a field was carried over into These particularized references were confusing, at the 1970 Stoke Festival, they constructed
pictures which consisted of grids laid on a blank, for in every other way the paintings seemed to complicated and (as it turned out) fragile objects
neutral ground. Traditional compositional be a straightforward progression from Prentice's and tried to impose rigid game-structures on
devices were set aside. Later, Prentice replaced earlier position, with its emphasis on general the participants. They have learnt since to do
canvas with Metalon, a reflective PVC, which parallels with the world of phenomena. better than to lead children through hoops
offered even greater neutrality than the coarse- The white canvases took the shape either devised by adults.
grained texture of a woven material and allowed of isosceles or of asymmetrical, right-angled Last Christmas they organized a party for
his grids to float in a bland two-dimensional triangles and were covered with finely-drawn, deprived children in Birmingham. They
illusion of depth. His pictures then became very widely-spaced grids. 'Weights' were introduced provided an assortment of traditional events —
long and thin and often employed more than in the form of small, black (or sometimes a ghost train, a pair of conjurers and a grotto
one stretcher; they became involved with such coloured) triangles or squares. So in Packington, where Father Christmas distributed presents.
concepts as balance and formal rhymes. a black square on the far left overweighted that More interestingly, they also created an open
Difficult to see all at once, they had to be read side of the picture. It was partly compensated environment where polystyrene cubes lay on
piece by piece. for by a square on the right. But since it lay the floor and were available for free play. Nets
Prentice has referred to artists such as nearer the centre than the first one, a small black hung overhead bulging with polystyrene
Mondrian who flourished in the years between triangle was thrown in as well. granules which floated down, when shaken, like
the two wars. 'The notion that there is such a The additional components were presented snow. Large, coloured cloths were also provided
thing as "abstract" painting carries with it the in different ways. Sometimes they were made of to climb under or wear. Their audience was
idea that by removing reference to specific aluminium or canvas and were separated from clearly astonished and delighted at being given
objects or events, it is possible to have an art the rest of the painting. On other occasions they the facilities to realize both their aggressive
form which at least temporarily parallels broad were merely figures painted on the main body and cooperative fantasies, with a minimum of
human concepts of space, behaviour and of the canvas or transparent perspex shapes external supervision and guidance.
necessity.' This formula is also an appropriate placed on top of it. Linear crosses also overlaid Treble Top, Holy Trinity, the ritual event
statement of his own aesthetic purposes. the grid. In part they functioned as cancellation which was their contribution to the Northern

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