PRESENTED at Newlyn Art Gallery as part of The Indiscipline of Painting at Tate St Ives, having covered the walls of the upper gallery in blue and white paint (the colours of Cornish kitchenware), and those in the lower gallery with red and blue lobsters, Swiss artist John M Armleder makes his presence felt here.
Renowned for his "pour paintings", which are made "usually impeccably dressed, perched at the top of a ladder, and tilting various cans of liquid towards the surface of a canvas, letting nature do the rest".
Sounds fun, but that's not all.
"He may later add a small snowfall of glitter, or embed star fish in the unctuous pools of varnish, but the work appears almost instantly in the process.
"The artist performs and the material behaves."
Unfortunately, we are denied the actual performance of pouring, and can only imagine what it must be like.
Then, too, we can only guess at how well or badly the said material has behaved. Presumably it's the former, otherwise these works would still be in Switzerland.
An artist whose roots lie in the avant-garde art movement Fluxus, we are told that the titles of John M Armleder's works are important. Whether the names of minerals, song titles or real or fictional Latin plant names, they suggest a fascination with classification and categorisation.
It is almost as if in using these titles he is distancing himself from the process of making and suggesting that his paintings are in some way found objects, and his work as an artist is the practice of selecting, ordering and categorising.
All well and good, but if only to witness the reactions of the gallery staff as he started to pour – who's going to clear up the mess? I still regret not being able to see this highly-regarded international artist in action,
From Dianthus Plumarius 200 and the six panels that make up Va Tupu Atua E, 200 in the upper gallery, to Equatorium Rugosum 200 and the wall painting Scotts 200 in the lower gallery, not forgetting the lobsters, John M Armleder's floor-to-ceiling works are as graphic as they are great.
Admission is free, and they can be seen in Newlyn Art Gallery, 10am to 5pm Tuesday to Saturday, until January 3, 2012. Although on a much smaller scale, it is worth looking in the gallery's Picture Room where the first exhibition in its Five By Five series is being held.
Comprised of works by George Morgan, Abigail Reynolds, Naomi Frears, Luke Frost and Richard Cook, it can be seen there until November 5.
During the next three months, the Picture Room and the Ramp Wall in The Exchange, Penzance, will stage five such mixed exhibitions, with profits from the sale of work helping to support the galleries' education and exhibition activities.
article copyright THE CORNISHMAN