Page 55 - Studio International - December 1973

imaginary, locations. The buildings lacked the benefits of a formal
themselves are given a subtly alien training Sedgley—to use his own
appearance but also, while the spaces words— 'set about clarifying for
in the other paintings are set about myself the basic premises for art and
with figures and images from the in so doing established a keyboard of
dream these two are alarmingly colours and a metre capable of
empty : in La Gare de St Rambert a modulation.'
solitary lion stalks the station It was a case of finding a language
forecourt while Winchester Walk SE1 for the issues he wished to treat or,
is utterly devoid of human or any perhaps, rules for the game he
other presence and somehow too wished to play. His colour board
manages to imply that this absence of (crimson, red, orange, yellow, green,
life is permanent and eternal. These viridian, blue and purple) is of
paintings are also expressions of relatively small intrinsic value or
another fundamental aspect of the permanent validity : rather, it
surrealist sensibility : that which possesses the fictive absoluteness of
enables the surrealist to experience those principles, the prerogative of
significance in the most banal places. art, which apply exclusively to the
In all these paintings, Maddox specific, to the singular (like the laws
seeks too those irrational of pataphysics which govern
juxtapositions which are the source of exceptions).
that poetic effect called by Breton Sedgley is clear— and so is the
'convulsive' beauty. Particularly spectator in front of his paintings and
striking in this respect is Coup D'Etat light shows —that while they consist
in which a conventionally dressed of colour, colour is not exactly what
man (a politician ?) headless, but they express. This is where the profit
wearing a collar and tie, stands lies— and the trouble starts. If Riley's
against a wall. His head has become canvases convey, among other things,
detached and has metamorphosed an edgy, stretched vigour, Sedgley
into the very Freudian image of an offers contemplation through the
egg within which lies a softly flaming sensuous mediation of a brilliant
candle. This egg hovers fractionally palette.
above the top of the wall. Could this If we examine his most debatable
man, as the title hints, be facing a exhibits at the Ikon Gallery, the recent
firing squad ? If so the sexual light shows, Sound Screen and
imagery of the egg and candle make Light-Sound /Sound-Light, we can
this work an interesting addition to determine how this intention works —
the long line of images in surrealist art and sometimes falters — in practice.
Peter Sedgley Sound Screen 1972 ( Photo: Lommatzsch, Berlin, courtesy AIR, London)
that link eroticism and death. In these two constructions, coloured
Perhaps the most intense lights are projected in varying
convulsive poetry generated in this sequence through slats onto white colour -in-itself at the expense of away from the earlier precision and
exhibition comes from the collages screens and the switchboard is the shifting meanings colour has for pristine toughness. Liberation from
and the very interesting group of controlled by a programme of the general eye. Also Sedgley's surface is a case in point. In a hard-
gouaches, dating from the early 1950s recorded sounds on a tape-recorder luminous palette reveals, at least in edged canvas such as Yellow
(all the other work in the exhibition, which is simultaneously broadcast these later works, a substratum of Attenuation the bands of colour
paintings and collages, is recent). through loud-speakers. over-relaxed sentiment. float, supported not by pigment
Collage has always been one of the They establish a remarkably Light shows have a long way to go. but by the optical confusions
most satisfactory visual media for persuasive, even hypnotic, Having broken from the frozen moment of the eye. Op-art effects in
Surrealism (it was in Max Ernst's meditative tempo. But there is a of the painted canvas within the last Sedgley's work are very important,
1920 collages that, said Breton, contradiction between the purity of few years, Sedgley has by no means for they have a magical quality
'Surrealism found itself') and the artist's attitude to colour and the exhausted the potential of time and which the light shows lack. Some
Conroy Maddox is a master of the art. literary or psychological associations the rhythms, both acoustic and of these paintings depend on a
One of the best is Song of the Wind in which colour ordinarily has for the visual, by which it can be defined. happy trickery and though they can
which a woman's shapely leg is observer—to which Sedgley, on his The formal simplicity of his be seen through, this enhances
attached to one edge of a great flat own account, pays little attention. paintings (e.g. the target pictures) rather than reduces their
gold ring on the opposite edge of It is hard to resist the feeling that in risks an obtrusive banality when persuasiveness (as with any
which rests a giant knife while, these works the latter interfere with extended and repeated in time : ingenious device).
curving through space on a the former. should a case be argued for greater The same can be said of the soft-
trajectory taking it through the This is indicated by the fact that the compositional variety ? edged target pictures, but now the
centre of the ring, shoots a stream of associations stimulated by the sound- There is also room for technical surface is often — if patchily —
white globules which on close track do not correspond with the improvements (these are partly a present. The deploying of projected
inspection rather disconcertingly suggestiveness of the visual imagery. question of finance), although after light, as in Corona (completed in
turn out to be golf balls. The music, is mostly austere, years of turning out highly finished 1972) does not eliminate this.
Simon Wilson alienated and forbidding whereas works of art, Sedgley appreciates The exhibition is a well-mounted,
the play of lights in Light-Sound/ the value of a certain rough-edged well-presented and well-selected
Peter Sedgley, Ikon Gallery, Sound-Light usually evokes a primitivism. mini-retrospective. Is it much more
Birmingham Shopping Centre, relaxed, pastoral response. It is By contrast, the pictures on view at than an interim report ? It suggests
20 October-10 November doubtless contrary to the artist's the Ikon Gallery have a weight and that Peter Sedgley is an artist who has
The easiest way to regard the last ten intentions, but it is too easy to authority largely absent from Sound passed his first great moment and has
years of Peter Sedgley's career is as a interpret the shifting patterns of the Screen and Light-Sound/Sound- yet to reach his next.
prolonged and systematic screen in a quasi-figurative sense; Light. When the relevant reservations Anthony Everitt
exploration of colour relationships. one half expects to see an Eden have been made about the recent
This was the régime he set himself or an Arcadia, but the screen works, in many ways a new start, Objects and Documents at the
when he emerged from his free continues to form and re-form Sedgley's outstanding achievement Museum of Modern Art, Oxford,
experiments with abstract surrealist without resolution luscious, pastel- remains, as is well known, the 13 October —18 November
frottage in the early 1960s .It would fondant blurs. liberation of colour from surface, At the Museum of Modern Art,
be wise not take this exploration in So beneath the disciplined from form and from mutually Oxford, now run by Nick Serota, late
too literal or technical a sense. systematization of the artist's diminishing juxtapositions. of the Arts Council, there is a show
No doubt impressed by the 'keyboard', there are unresolved Nevertheless, it is hard to resist of Arts Council acquisitions titled
rigours of Bridget Riley's approach to contradictions which stem from a too the feeling that each development in 'Objects and Documents'. This was
painting and conscious that he exclusive preoccupation with the past few years has been a step organized and selected by Richard
251