Tortoise and the Hare

What are our painting graduates from last year up to?? Only four months from finishing their BVA's , a few have already started to build a name for themselves. Talking with Lisa, she spent the summer squirreling away on a solo show down in Huntly, complete with a visit from the Mayor and a spot in the local newspaper. Thats more coverage than a bottle of Watties tomato sauce on a $2 sausage. She also managed to sell most of her work, as well as nab a large handful of commissions for this year. Things are indeed looking bright for her in our recession-ridden times.

But lookie here, a mysterious txt from an unknown number alerted me to the opening of Slow at Tim Melville, a show with Wayne Youle, Elliot Collins and paint graduate Linden Simmons. Looks like he also spent the summer producing a new collection of paintings, following on from where he left us last year in the Graduate Show. Something was slightly different about these though, something more intense, more violent but smaller in scale. A ferocity I had never seen before. Perhaps tinged with the depressive changing of economic times, natural disaster and turbulant powers. Linden is able to encapsulate the delicate nature and subtle nuance of the watercolour medium; the glint of a car door, a flurry of smoke over a cityscape, luring the viewer into a false sense of security. But it is an injurious romance. And one I come back to, knowing what will be revealed is not what I will normally revel in.

It is funny how the title of the show is the way in which I always view Linden's work. Slow is how it unravels. And I think it is only because when first confronted with it, I am in a state of denial. It is only now, when safely removed from the works themselves, that I can ponder the impact they have had on me. What is it about myself that refuses to see the world?

Elliot's paintings on the other hand were based around a codebreaking system, turning words into patterns. I had managed to break the first word of a painting which happened to be 'The'. Prizes for anyone who can give me the rest*.

- Agnes

* Did I say Prize? I really meant eternal thanks. We really have nothing to give but love, and maybe the odd pav or two.