Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Berwick Gymnasium, Berwick upon Tweed 26 May – 8 July
Reviewed by: Kirsty Walker
A visit to the dentist, chairs in a theatre, millions of mountains and the best condom picture I have seen. These comments are all taken from the visitor's book at Berwick Gymnasium, and have been inspired by the work of Daniel Sturgis. Others mention carpets, quilts, dividing cells, psychedelic graveyards and Asian decoration. I would like to add skittles and Barbapapas (remember the shape-shifting blobs of 70s children's TV). Sturgis himself says his shapes are inspired mainly by consumer packaging.
Even the fiercest critic of abstract painting cannot fail to be seduced by Sturgis' sumptuous acrylic colours (including altarpiece gold and silver), his neat, meticulous execution and the sheer scale of his works. Fill of Beauty is twenty-one feet long and took four months to create. Appropriately, given that the painting is concentrated on two borders of the canvas, the work was produced during Sturgis' residency at Berwick, a town whose history is so much a tug of war between Scotland and England.
At first sight Sturgis' 'border paintings' may appear machine-like in their immaculate outlines and repetition, but look again. Just when you think you've sussed the sequence, a discordant note emerges destroying the rhythm, perverting the pattern, and reminding us of the lost art of human error. Sturgis compares his work to Baroque architecture in its twisting and frivolous inversion of classical rules. He seems to bend rules within rules, inviting the viewer to play with him. Even the titles are a little tongue-in-cheek: shouldn't that be 'FULL of Beauty' or are we back to the dentist comment?
Writer detail:
KIRSTY WALKER
is an art writer and travel journalist based in Edinburgh
Venue detail:
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