Exhibitions

Auckland

Belinda Griffiths Inflection

Föenander Galleries 11 February–9 March MICHAEL DUNN To enter Belinda Griffiths’ Inflection is to escape from the technicolour experience of the everyday into a world that is muted and almost monochromatic. Most of the paintings are small in scale and intimate in their conception. Her preference for white grounds which remain visible around, behind and through the painted imagery gives a graphic quality to her artwork that points to her training as a designer and printmaker. These grounds provide the starting point for her brush drawing and markings in which the white ground enters and becomes part of the imagery and defines the extent of the work, for she leaves considerable areas empty and untouched by the brush.

Many paintings depictions of birds that exist in a space between realist and abstract imagery. These creatures are not detailed ornithological specimens studied with hard-edge precision but are captured on the wing, fluttering and flying so that it is an evocation of movement, not a static image, that we experience. Her strokes and sweeps of acrylic have a gestural quality that exactly matches the energy and rapidity of movement of the birds’ wings in flight. Referring to photographic stills of the birds in movement, she tries to capture the essence of flight by the purity of her marks on the white surface. Only an eye or beak are held in focus for an instant and provide an essential reference for our response to the birds, plus a touch of colour.

Conceived as a series, with the title When the birds came back, these small paintings feature a blackbird that lends itself to symbolical associations of mortality and impermanence rather than those of peace and love. In one work, entitled When the blackbird flew out of sight 2, the introduction of a brooding male figure, back turned to the bird that flies away behind him, has a psychological intensity suggestive of loss and sorrow that is evocative yet free of narrative or sentimentality. The bird is free to fly away and escape, whereas the man is trapped by his thoughts and feelings. The white surface encapsulates her idea of a universal space rather than a specific location. It encourages the viewer to reflect on the subconscious associations of the imagery, on the imaginative rather than the literal meanings found there.

In addition to the bird paintings, there are several larger figure studies that have a powerful impact. Two of these are of male half-length nude figures on dark grounds, one in profile, the other viewed from the back. Titled & they are hung effectively as a pair on an end wall. Conceived boldly and put down directly with sweeps of pigment, they were for me the highlight of the show. In these works, the white ground is visible only along the margins of the painted surfaces,