Artist’s Talk

Tony Mighell
Light Shuffle
Sheffer Gallery Darlington
October 27 2018 Final Day

So I want to use this opportunity to unpick, unravel some of the things within and around painting and specifically my painting.

Firstly the title; Why Light Shuffle?  The title connotes slow movement, in the picture, in me, while I’m working; movement and rhythm; a slow shuffle; shuffle but I didn’t know how to use it; Damien Minton suggested Shuffling into Light which mutated into Light Shuffle: thanks Damien

It's notoriously difficult to talk about painting; but I want to have a try.

I'm not talking about images or subject matter; the things we recognize in the picture; the things that inform the political, psychological or theoretical world view of the painter; but the gist the grit of painting; that thing you respond to intuitively immediately prior to the brain kicking in and helping you decipher the picture.

I don't think ideas of art help at all with this task (?) in fact that word clouds the murky waters even more by proffering keys to unlock secrets  but in the end really only assisting the viewer’s conceits and ideas

So what is it that makes things tick, click, stick there; most painters don't even try  to explain this, instead deferring to notions like

·       it's just all intuitive

·       I'm just in the moment

·       It comes from somewhere else

·       When I’m painting I am in another world

·       etc etc

It is even referred to and famously quoted by Duchamp as

Stupid as a painter

There is a history to this: painters were seen to be involved in Mimesis and the techniques of making and poets used their intellects to create

So how do you talk about painting and what makes it work

Terms like plasticity, plastic space, modulation, the language of colour, the actual language of the surface which incorporates the 2 biggies line and colour; but also includes the myriad other affects and effects in and of its physicality, like weight tone texture, transparency opaqueness impasto, these are all terms used within the practice arena but tend to the arcane the hermetic the ‘not easily talked about’  and to most non practitioners pretty boring

We know it is mysterious but do we just leave it at that? Last year when I talked at my exhibition I dwelled on notions of this mystery by referring to artists like Morandi, Newmann Emily Knangware and the mysteries of working in a non outcome based way; an open way

Talking about studio habits, techniques, what music or what books inspire, who are the major influences, all those tit bits and anecdotes these are the standard subject matter of most artists talks but today I want to try a different tack  

I've recently written some essays on painters and painting and have even had a couple published. And so today I'm going to review my own work; I'm going to start with what's on the wall and work back into it. This could all go horribly wrong.

It is a bit risky and I could get lost but that is exactly what happens when you paint; it's risky to the point of madness and you not only do but in fact you have to get lost

But anyway here we go

Review

Tony Mighell
Light Shuffle
Sheffer Gallery Darlington
October 2018 

So we are here today in front of Tony Mighell's recent pictures; it is nice to see that the flurry of work shown in late 2016 and early 2017 is not just that; a flurry. There is here, as someone was heard saying, some progress.

There is an increased use of colour and lighter colour and this does suggest some change in spirit. I wonder if the time spent in Canberra earlier in the year had an affect or maybe it is a lightening of weight on the spirit as age encroaches.  

There are figures, not figures and not not figures; there are rhythmic marks like a meditative repetition that wipes out areas and allows certain shapes to claim centre stage; there are  coloured marks/areas that seem to be obliterating, eating out a definition or a non definition. There are twists and turns, as he appears to be avoiding, escaping, any clarity or literalness. But you keep seeing the same sort of shape appearing in the different media; there are figures and not figures and not not figures.

It would be easy to ask why he does not go ‘the whole way’ and allow figures to exist in the work

(note to author you're heading into dangerous waters here buddy) ( back to you, painter, isn't that like when you're working you like to skate around subject but not let it take hold) (fair point author)

The obvious effect of avoiding being tied to any subject or consciously developing a subject is that the picture can develop; the painted surface can grow it can become something in itself. It takes on organic life in and of itself leading to A painting (note to author: that's better)

But somehow a sense of the figure, the figurative remains; is it possible for a painting to be figurative without having an obvious figure in it? Roger Kemp was always adamant that his mark was a concentrated symbol of 'Man' with a capital M and it would seem there is a remnant from that mentorship lingering in this work.

But the eating away, this obliterating by the rhythmic use of lighter colour in a number of the pictures suggest something seen in a lot of indigenous work, where a dotting or mark making is used to 'hide' subject matter deemed to be of a particular secret nature; Johnny Warangula first used this in the early 1970s not long after the desert movement started in Papunya to hide the secret/sacred and the dotting process went on to  be a/the  dominant visual element in a lot of Central Desert picture making;. (Note to author: I am aware of this but you could also mention Emily  and especially Pollock in the all over pictures where the marks keep developing the picture and are not used to make a sign a symbol or the figure and this could be argued was A if not THE start of a minimalist aesthetic) (note to painter; these things happened at not much different time! And stop interrupting)

So in these pictures there is an obliteration, a painting away from things, a capturing of a non thing, the continual attempt to keep the picture open, open form, and so the question is to what end

(note to author: there you go again wanting an outcome, an endpoint, a certainty, when you know that leads to clunkier and clunkier pictures) (okay painter I get your point but then how do I talk about it) (note to author: try talking about what are the possibilities, the ramifications, the subtext the hidden affects of true openness in painting?!)

This continual striving to openness as a strategy to allow the painting to develop as a painting also allows ……. (Go on author stretch yourself; what are the possible potentials from a true openness?)

Maybe it could be said that a true openness is a revealing of self, an emotional, and psychological openness to others, that allows them in to the picture without tricks or secrets or hidden keys; it is the chest open, the heart exposed; you could say the optimum affect is one of love and sharing. (There you go author bravo you’re starting to get somewhere although be careful next you'll start talking of the spiritual and everybody will definitely leave)

So the question is where to from here for Tony Mighell. Will that dot dot dotting, the rhythmic repetitive mark making (like a form of Tourette’s or as if he is chanting some Buddhist mantra as he works) become the dominant element in any upcoming work. Or will it be the figure not figure not not figure continue to hover like a suggestion of hope and be the strong force in the work. Or will it be a combination of both?  It’s late in the day for him, he ‘ain’t no spring chicken’ as was overheard at he opening; obviously too late to be a wunderkind, an enfant terrible, but being alive and working later in life has its positives and I for one am incredibly keen to see where it will head.