[exhibition review,  John Nixon at ACCA, July 2004]

JOHN NIXON’S EPW – A UNIVERSAL PROJECT

There is an undeniable worldiness, or a world-scale view to John Nixon’s art. Nixon’s practice maintains a unique connection to international art movements of the 20^th century. Nixon’s art practice is an integral part of Australian modern art history. John Nixon is one of the leading minimalist practitioners in Australia, and his art continues to represent Australia’s position on constructive abstraction throughout Europe and America today. The longevity of Nixon’s practice has allowed successive generations of art practitioners to interpret and learn from his artistic commitment. John Nixon’s EPW 2004 will always exist as a critical precedent.

From two years of making individual artworks, Nixon has succeeded in developing the exhibition titled EPW 2004. Nixon’s Experimental Painting Workshop defines his activity of constructing inter-referencial art that employs the principals of both painting and sculpture. EPW 2004 existed somewhere in between. From the conceptual realms of constructivism, minimalism, pop, and the readymade, Nixon has been able to develop a dynamic hybrid language that has been considered as both universally broad and specifically technical for almost four decades. Essentially reduced as it is, Nixon’s artwork constantly succeeds in forming an utterly personal engagement. Response to Nixon’s art must surely vary individually. My own is merely one point of view.

EPW 2004 was constructed from two pairs of opposite-facing arrangements. The largest work in the exhibition, Orange Monochrome (enamel on masonite, 2004) employed one entire wall. Opposite to this, one hundred and two works of differing colour, scale, and media were hung on the other of the two longer walls. Table painting (Orange Monochrome), enamel on masonite on trestle table, 2003, and Box painting (Orange Monochrome), enamel on MDF on trestle table, 2003, were the two table based works that squared the installation off, completing a rectilinear circuit throughout the ACCA exhibition hall. The vast assembly of varying pieces worked off the common principals of the massive Orange Monochrome. Likewise, the two table-based works presented two freestanding examples of Nixon’s monochromatic oevre. All works in the exhibition functioned in accordance to their specific location, and held immeadiate roles in the exhibition layout.

Nixon’s art operates upon recognition and familiarity. Within the exhibition, a 2004 work titled Silver Monochrome (silver enamel on cardboard and hessian) makes functional use of cardboard fruit trays, often found in grocery stores. Within the piece, these trays instantly recall the regular activity of food shopping. For Nixon, this otherwise ordinary task becomes an opportunity to source objects that hold a level of formal and material interest. The tray, being smooth and patterned with hemispherical forms is mounted upon the flat yet rough texture of hessian. These two objects of differing surface as well as history and function are then bonded together and painted silver. Here silver solidifies a new relationship between the two former individually existing objects. Together they make a new, meta-object. EPW 2004 presented a range of such experiments.

Many artists aim to produce an evolving body of visual interpetations. Nixon has maintained the continuity of his practice so that his earliest Block paintings are hermetically related to the works of the same classification in EPW 2004. It is through Nixon’s modes of production that further artworks will be realised with perpetual momentum, onwards into the future. Repeated treatment of rendering elements such as orange or silver, or the many diads (eg: gloss/matt, rough/smooth, or big/small) create procedural spaces which are charged with meticulous interest. EPW 2004 was a clear and visually rich discussion on the importance of variation in experimentation.

EPW 2004 presented abstract artworks literally and entirely. The multi-layered immeadiacy of the exhibition meant that the viewer could examine each of the one hundred and five works on view, or broadly witness the entire installation to receive a universal impression of Nixon’s abstract gesture. Nixon’s artworks simultaneously place utmost importance in colour and form whilst also declaring themselves as modest objects of work, where orange carries out the functions that silver cannot.

Instead of attempting to quote the world through techniques of realism, Nixon’s EPW 2004 was a display of an abstracted world through formal objects. Nixon continually demonstrates an ever-increasing understanding of how non-objective works can collectivly define an artist’s visual language. EPW 2004 presented an art that will continue to produce interesting findings amidst changing artworld ideals. For massive reasons, but in humble terms, EPW 2004 was part of Nixon’s lifelong commitment to a formal vision within an increasingly disparate world.

Justin Andrews

http://cacsa.org.au/cvapsa/2004/8_BS33_3/epw.pdf