This week Alim A. Hosein reviews a Terrence Roberts exhibition of paintings. Alim Hosein is a linguist, artist and critic attached to the English Division of the Department of Language and Cultural Studies at the University of Guyana.
By Alim A. Hosein
Terence Roberts has been exhibiting his small, highly-coloured abstract-looking artwork in Guyana since his return here in 1995. Previous to this, he had exhibited in Guyana as part of the ‘Expressionova’ group which in the 1970s tried to move Guyana’s art into a more avant-garde direction. He has also been writing about cinema and in particular, discussing expressions of sensuality in that medium. The celebration of the sensuous, and his championing of it as an expression of humanism and progress, has been a feature of his work.
His current artwork continues in the avant-garde manner which he promotes consciously. In his catalogue comments to his most recent exhibition, Kaieap, at the Centre of Brazilian Studies (April 25-May 9), he declares that his art is “not an academic method, or process of paint application, or drawing. It is an art that follows no taught process…” His focus is on the act and processes of creativity, the non-reliance on depiction, the avoidance of mannerisms or of the picturesque. As he puts it, “each painting invites contemplation of creative order in a surprising, unacademic, anti-mannerist way.”
This freeing of art from message or depiction fits in well with his interest in sensuality since it allows him to manipulate colour, shape, etc, as he wishes for their own sakes. Yet, in previous exhibitions, one did not see him making much use of such freedoms. In the current exhibition, he seems to have rediscovered an artistic freedom, since he makes use of different techniques – not just brush application of paint but also stamping and printing, use of found materials such as bones and bits of wood as stamps to create different shapes and textures which overlay the brush-applied paint, and unpainted areas of white space. These paintings thus have a richer texture than seen in his previous work, and also, the new technique adds to the dimensions of experience possible to the viewer.
Apart from this, the sensuality is strikingly evident in the vibrant use of colour and the profusion of lines, shapes and marks over different areas of the small paintings (no larger than 21 x 24 inches). It may be very easy to stop at the visual aspect of Roberts’ work and many viewers do. At this level, there is much to hold one’s attention at different levels. There is the visual attraction of the work. The colours are well put-together: deep blues, cool yellows, vermilions and lime greens and warmer magentas. It is an exotic palette. Scattered among these are mainly white lines, spiky triangles, networks, filigrees and dots.
The areas of colour seem random but fall into patterns, sometimes filling the entire canvas as in Cosmic Market where a deep blue becomes a field against which pink, magenta, and lemon-lime lines and figures are scattered. At other times, the colour is confined into sharply-defined areas, or may suggest explosions, or rivers, or objects.
Just as certainly, many viewers would try to figure out the colours, lines, shapes, etc, at a more cognitive level. But Roberts insists that his work is not about conscious cognition although viewers are free to approach the paintings in this manner. He says in his catalogue that the meanings of his paintings “reside in their visual and structural composition and detail.” The appreciation of the art lies in the viewer’s response to the actual use of the elements of art on the canvas, without reference to tangible reality or to academic ideas about art. The fact that these elements were put together by a human creator means that there could be something there for the viewer to connect to, not in terms of a meaning or theme or subject, but as the discovery of human creativity and community. In this sense, Roberts’s work is mystical in intent – “mystical contemplation” as he puts it. The creation of the works is an activity of discovery for the artist, and for the viewer as well, a process which Roberts calls “painted surprise.”
But what about the very real and evocative names that Roberts gives to his paintings? Why would an arrangement of colours, shapes, and lines etc be given a definite name such as Shaman’s Cure, Basketmaker, or Medicine Bag? According to Roberts, such names provide additional – but not necessary – avenues for understanding the works, depending on the viewer’s background of knowledge, and his or her interests, etc. Some viewers may note the American connotations and associations of the titles and so may look for and be able to perceive the hints and suggestion of more figural representations which indicate Roberts’ intellectual working out of the theme of the particular paintings. Others may not, but this is not a problem for the artist since he does not see himself as a photographer or essayist.
Roberts has an interest in the subject matter, even though explication or depiction of the subject matter is not his main concern. Like Desmond Ali, Roberts has an appreciation of American history, and the entire exhibition reflects this. The very names of the pieces speak of various aspects of Amerindian life and mythology, and also of a wider, more mystical sense of the movement of those peoples across time and space to arrive at these shores.
The name of the exhibition – Kaieap – is an Amerindian concept for collective, cooperative activity. The paintings are meant to generate a cooperative experience of art, in which viewers participate in whichever aspects of the work catch their imagination, whether it is the sensual, aesthetic, intellectual, mystical or the emotional.
Roberts ties in this aspect of Amerindian journeying with the kind of journeying that he prompts viewers to undertake when they look at his paintings, so that whether they know anything about Amerindian history or nothing at all, once they are moved by the composition that they see in front of them, they will be connecting in a mystical way to that journey, and to the artistic process that made the connection possible for them.
(His focus is on the act and processes of creativity, the non-reliance on depiction, the avoidance of mannerisms or of the picturesque. As he puts it, “each painting invites contemplation of creative order in a surprising, unacademic, anti-mannerist way.”
This freeing of art from message or depiction fits in well with his interest in sensuality since it allows him to manipulate colour, shape, etc, as he wishes for their own sakes.)
