Complex art a visual diary of world journey

By Rina Rao

JAKARTA (JP): The 1990s have seen a shift in emphasis in the art world. There has been an active attempt to draw attention away from Euro-American influences toward dialog with non-Western cultures. International art trends also show an exploration of the relationship between individual artistic practices and changing currents worldwide.

All this is exemplified in Peter Atkins' World Journal, an exposition of paintings recording the artist's travels across Asia, North America and South America, being held at the Australian Cultural Center until June 8.

The exhibition has arrived in Jakarta after successfully representing Australia at the prestigious VIII Indian Triennale in New Delhi, one of the most significant art events in the world.

The key to understanding Atkins' work lies in a single quotation from Karl Marx: "...it is the intuition of the complex form that gives us the key to grasping the simple one." In Atkins' work, complex thoughts are pared down to a simple truth and a single image. The exotic is familiarized, and places are at once recognizable and strange at the same time.

In Atkins' motivation to travel lies his goal of self- discovery. The exhibition is a visual diary that chronicles the artist's search for identity, authenticity and personal expression through his direct interaction with the various cultures encountered on his journey.

The work operates at two levels. On the surface Atkins is an abstract painter, and on another level the work is a personal narrative. This formal tension functions within the complex interplay of modernism and post-modernism, with the early influences and notions of abstract expressionism with its simplified, minimal approach to image making.

Personal

This World Journal tells us more about the artist than about the places he visited. Small mementos and personal talismans are incorporated in many of the works, and imbued with a ritual or magical significance of a personal nature.

The pictures emerge from personal memories and reactions, and reflect feelings and emotions rather than a record of specific places. While they attempt to capture a heightened sense of self, they also try to hold on to what is fleeting and out of reach.

These records are not, however, traditional narratives dealing with the romance of travel. The links between places are not those of time and geography. Rather, 'place' exists at a level that is charged with powerful, abstract spaces and its overlapping dimensions.

The sense of alienation prompts the artist to reassert a sense of unity and find images that create a general impression. The paintings revel in cultural incongruities and have a rhythm of their own.

These paintings emphasize the idea of cultural transition and evolution, and the artist feels his role is to document contemporary world culture as multifaceted and multiracial. Therefore each work captures the essence of the culture of a country in an emblematic form with singular, expressive images.

The whole body of work exists in a spiritual world of myth and symbolism in which the imagery does not destroy the links.

Forty paintings are exhibited in this show of Peter Atkins' World Journal. All of them are 30 centimeters by 30 centimeters in size, in mixed media, including collages.

Atkins' work is intuitive and tends to be a complete and independent concept in itself, rather than part of a larger theme. Often a single color is added to either black or white, and the imagery is often religious, like a cross or a church spire.

The painter uses commercial paints and tarpaulin, and according to him "the stretch marks and stains are the embodiment of time."

Symbolic

The images are often geometric and monochromatic, and portray a certain purity. Atkins is able to concentrate potent vitality into a single, symbolic element like a red oval on a pink background as in Nirvana -- Death in Varanasi.

Some works express a certain paradoxical delight at displacement, like Inca Cola or Mayan Temple and Honda Sign, which are not just simple morality tales. The moments of personal revelation deal with social incongruities and juxtapose opposites.

Cultural transition is a predominant concern in the Latin American pieces. Symbols, signs, words and images are stripped of their associations and presented as stark specimens. The images are not spontaneous -- they reflect personal alienation while retaining a sense of empathy.

Atkins' journeys are like pilgrimages, and escape is an important element in them. It is an escape from a society which he feels lacking. Individual isolation, rootlessness, the fleetingness of life are all themes that are explored in these works.

Despite reflecting a private mental state, external realities are acknowledged. Objects taken directly from the environment and collaboration with craftspersons form direct connections with external realities, as in Journey (with completed stations -- for Garry), done in Agra, India; Altered 'Vicki Comb' Texta Drawing, done in Brixton, England; or Memorial. Woven Cross by Salasaca Indian, done in Banos, Ecuador. Again, a Mayan temple shape is appropriate in the Honduras and a Sepik mask as an icon for New York. Materials

The use of unconventional materials such as cowhide, linoleum, velvet, etc., breaks down the whole idea of traditional media. The vast range of materials used challenges conservative attitudes to art, according to the artist.

The use of text in Atkins' works is a device whereby "the act of painting or image making is pared down", as the artist says. Vanity/Poverty, done in Rio de Janeiro, is an example.

According to Atkins, words state the acts more clearly and emotionally, and when combined with appropriate imagery text can achieve great power. This is of course highly debatable, and questions the whole meaning and value of painting -- and indeed all visual art, including Atkins' own -- as a mode of expression.

Atkins' work seems to be engaged in post-modern strategies of collage, appropriation and cultural nomadism. However, the use of text does not have ironic connotations, nor does it have the surface eclecticism associated with post-modern art.

Rather, his work seems to merge his own esthetics with that of the cultures he encounters. The resulting body of work is easy to understand, but does not easily evoke empathy.