Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record
From: “The Times are Tidy” by Sylvia Plath
The Province of the Saved
Should be the Art
From: “The Province of the Saved” by Emily Dickenson
“It is in society that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in society that they recall, recognize, and localize their memories” [1]
Provincial Life is this year’s oeuvre for Philip Willey. An unassuming exposition, this show contrasts existent historical references with the past. He introduces themes from a documented archive, which brings the visual commentary to the forefront and allows drawn and painted portraits intermingling local backdrops to propose a reassessment of history’s recollection that may intensify present processing.
Willey plays with Hannah Maynard’s image, a photographer who challenged photographic space in 1860’s Victoria. She cycles steadily with brandish strokes of lively colour before the Spiral Café, and stopping her bike while merrily collaged, she looks at a photographed excerpt of a John Luna work in bold address of present and future provincialism, a readable argument to thwart any naysayer. An inspired entity defying convention, Maynard provides Willey with a muse.
Soonghees village life with steadfast, carved canoes shored at the current Fort Street waterfront reveals the Blue Bridge in the distance, and in another work, paddlers confront the soon to be bridge or row past a little ferry. Gallantly pointing bows, Willey points to future violations, a portent of life we have overpowered, and the presage of ruin eminent with disregard of what is valuable about our cultural mediums. A biting contrast of whalers next to whale watchers (Moral Dilemma), he drives the lost life forward. Willey postulates the affect of cultural influence. His works are deftly drawn and painted with a wash of colour deferentially shaping nostalgia, both for the past lives lived through our engineered landmarks, soon redefining our mores.
A bike rider pulling a child in a covered yellow rain cart, a symbol of a contemporary urban professionals looks at the viewer with Fort Victoria as their neighbourhood, challenging our outlook with their oblivion. In another work, a horse drawn cart is poised in Bastion square providing imagery to compare past and present scenarios of provincial life. Capable of precise draughtsmanship, when Willey is looser with his lines (Bob’s Your Uncle), he shows how we fumble with history’s lessons. We cannot remember without experience, but we can learn, clumsily.
The Kingdom (2008) by Damien Hirst bares its teeth behind smiling Emily Carr, with Woo, her monkey. Inspired by Hirst’s Spot painting, Willey dots the background of a juxtaposed BC bicycle rickshaw, touring, spotting the sights? In the pale distance, a tall sail is in harbour, reminding us of the passage of time and analogous intention for expedition. Hirst is an interpretation of the monetary credence a prominent sale (Saatchi, for Hirst) can affect the life of an artist, and reminds of Carr’s poverty. Both creatures are out of their habitat, as well. Wooing us with the unfamiliar, challenging our comfort zone poses risk to insular lives. According to Willey’s pictorial interpretation, this financial transaction brings artist and their work from provincial to international status in the public’s perspective. Utilizing Hirst, Willey distinguishes provincial providence with the strength of Hirst reputation, which is communicable.
Willey reveals reflexive aggression with a hammer placed near very delicate teacups, symbolizing a past still present (Tea with Julian). Julian Schnabel smashed his crockery. Willey shatters with associated imagery, demonstrating the calculating transgression of colonialism and pejorative provincialism. By painting aboriginal boaters riding on a moonlit waterway in the tearoom window, Willey reiterates the impact of inaction.
Woman on a Bike (after De Kooning) brings restlessness to Willey’s show. Uneasy, yet breaking out of his placid cerebral visual vocabulary, Willey embraces past influences, allowing his restraint to burst out with arrestingly substantial, attacking strokes and tight composition. De Kooning, along with other European expats were once “provincial artists in a provincial capital, living in the shadow of Europe, who woke up one day in the 1950s to discover that New York was the metropolis of art and they were the unlikely, paint-splattered princes of the city.” Aside from the fame and fortune, De Kooning found this change oppressive. [2] Willey includes the bicycle we found Hannah Maynard riding in several other works to assure continuity, to corroborate that there is consequence to non-provincialism status causing interference to an artist’s journey.
The largest work (Carthage) refers to the North African city founded in Virgil’s Aeneid. Willey exudes a salient, crepuscule timbre that launches a reverie, noting civic improvements that marginalize people, relegating them to boarders of a watery divide. The work is a tribute to Turner who emulated Claude Lorrain. Where in the Lorrain and Turner works there is a tenebrous luminosity, in Willey’s painting, with Willey’s deeply amiable colours shows us his optimism and we anticipate favorable outcome to environmental alteration, in spite of provincial circumspection.
Vanishing Point borrows a De Chirico streetscape where surrounded by a diffused orangey glow, Willey shows examples of historical buildings in isolation and between, segregating past and present, distant trestles creating a provincial surrealism segregating memory, present constructs and future possibility. Willey demonstrates the affect of isolation. The past and present edifices are inaccessible, and we connect with the girl with a hoop, endowing playful abandon necessary for creation. Maybe it’s from Hannah’s bicycle.
Philip Willey found himself in Victoria BC around 40 years ago. “Victoria has been good to me”, he says. Speaking with him, he is ready with a tapestry of stories. One of those world travelers that hobnobbed with soon to be famous artists along the way, Willey has engaged with a veritable whose-who of art icons. A former board member of Open Space Gallery and writer for numerous art magazines while sustaining his art practice, Willey has been, both abroad and here in Victoria in the welcome sphere of provincial life.
Provincial Life
New Paintings by
Philip Willey
Spiral Café
418 Craigflower Ave
Victoria West
6 September – 3 October 2011
Watch video
[1] Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. On Collective Memory. Trans. And ed. Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[2] http://www.robertfulford.com/Dekoonin.html
Very nice review.
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