Page 58 - Studio International - March April 1975

Gerald Ferguson, Painting, 1969

There are paintings that use the letter changing modes of orientation that every systematic progressions of the marks, or it
`I' repeated over and over again. Working second object demands. Black and white may be that the actual intervals (in two
through stencils, they register minute photographs signify a totally different large works from 1973) represent the
variations that the artist allows to happen context of interpretation from a black and stretch of the artist's arm across the paper
but refuses to dramatize. He retains white 'dot' painting or a printed page. and make absolute placement and
throughout a disinterested, dispassionate Moreover a photograph may be the verticality of position central issues — the
control over his own mechanical document of a performance or it may be works present the measure of the artist's
processes; and yet the subject of the piece an essay in the structure of photographic physical presence and challenge
is the personal pronoun 'I', it points to information; a typed sheet may be a comparison with our own. •
him five hundred times over. A more proposal for a piece or an account of it; or
recent work uses a simple vertical it may be a systematic accumulation of
templet that he draws round over and words or just a set of marks made with a
over again, cramming each shape right up typewriter. Where documents refer to
against the next. If we read it as an 'I' sound or movement — or perhaps even to
despite the absence of serifs then his a film of a performance — so they add new
ego virtually excludes the possibility of dimension to the experience. The interest
anything else. If we construct it as a of the dot paintings may reside in the
phallic symbol of Freudian psychology, Gerald Ferguson, Painting, 5972
then it presents enough penises to fulfil
the exaggerated ambitions even of the
FUCK piece.
There are several 'circle' pieces,
manipulations of the recorded sound of
running feet (Getting the run around) or
two performers at either end of a rope
trying to establish a constant relationship
to a circle drawn on the floor (Staying in
line). And there are more 'square' pieces
too, prints as well as paintings. There are
pieces that exploit the perspective of
camera or video camera to generate a
convexity out of the rectangular surface of
a wall — and to that extent accommodate
the square and the circle. The 'circle'
pieces are mostly performances and in an
exhibition these are likely to be
represented by diagrams; then suddenly
among the diagrams d set of concentric
circles that are nothing but circles, as
many as the adjustment of the compass
will allow.
The work is multifaceted and open-
ended, but it constantly re-anchors itself
on a painting basis, and so the traditional
context of an exhibition of objects
hanging on walls (like that at Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design in March 1974)
provides a very meaningful section
through the art. The prevailing
understatement of black and white in
orderly array is energized not only by the
induction of colour and the formal
variability in detail, but also by the
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