Sally Elesby
For the last few years, Sally Elesby has been developing a highly individual and accomplished body of work that, while supported by a number of Los Angeles critics, collectors and fellow artists, has not received the attention outside LA that it deserves. Elesby's past work has included quirky, toy-like constructions of twisted wire and colourful baubles, followed by hyper-feminised 'primary structures' stripped of their bulk and dolled up with lace, satin, feathers and other craft store accoutrements. In the last year or so, she has directed her imagination toward a fantastical re-invention of painting, beginning with humble, square grids of wire that tenuously attach themselves to the gallery wall, their fragile bodies shielded with layers of protective glue and paint. These introductory works suggested a post-apocalyptic resuscitation of painting, where the warp and woof of a canvas support is cobbled together from scraps of wire and given a basic coating of monochromatic medium essentially starting from ground zero. The increasing complexity of the paintings that have followed suggests an evolutionary progress within Elesby's futuristic universe, as simple monochromes have mated with partners of different hues: conflicted couplings which have resulted in sometimes unruly offspring.
This exhibition features a 1996 series of work entitled 'Rangy Paintings', which is made up of just such progeny. In these works, the square grids have been stretched horizontally across the wall, and colours blend and shift to mimic Minimalist diptychs like those of Brice Marden. Whatever composure artists like Marden achieved in the past is long gone in Elesby's paintings, however, as they slink, droop and struggle just to stay fixed to the wall. Some, such as Rangy Painting Blue into Red gain structural strength through dense tanglings of painted wire, as if the clotted, stalactite-encrusted ribbons of lipstick red were brought together with those of electric blue by violent accident. Others, such as Rangy Painting Pink into Pink barely fight off the forces of gravity and have to enlist help from intermediaries. Here, a band of faint lavender-pink dangles from the wall by two naked wires, curled over and slouching in defeat. A sturdier, nearby cylinder of vibrant, bubble gum-pink anchors a cantilevered rescue mission by a mustard yellow-encrusted wire bridge, keeping the whole trio this archipelago of Elesbyland from the brink of disaster. Can painting really be this much fun to interpret? Can colour and form carry such meaning and personality, connecting the viewer vicariously to the forces of life, death and everything else in between? Elesby certainly makes a compelling case for it.
The newest works in the exhibition, the 'Motive Paintings' from 1997, take the drama to a more nuanced level, sending her mutant paintings through the embarrassment and glory of a newly acquired adulthood. Less fragile and vulnerable than the 'Rangy Paintings', the 'Motive Paintings' bristle with confidence, sometimes evidenced by garish decorativeness, elsewhere by the apparent inclination to explore the space beyond the gallery wall. Motive Painting #2, for instance, is firmly tethered to its institutional host, its saffron crown alone is rooted by no less than 18 sprouts of paint-encrusted wire. A platoon of mint green beams lends still more support, encouraging and contributing to a sense of unabashed self-adornment, seen in heavy accretions of baby blue medium in the painting's centre, and long purple plumes at either flank. This glamorous peacock of a painting is a far cry from the nearly pathetic compositions that precede it, as is Motive Painting #1 which swings out into the space of the gallery like a grappling mountaineer. This new work has also improved upon the flimsy foundations of its predecessors, laying definitive claim to the wall with numerous purple antennae that provide a fulcrum for its flashy forays into full-blown three-dimensionality. In pieces such as this, popped-up colours and wilful arabesques of muscled wire push Elesby's brood into a new realm of existence one full of the potential that accompanies self-determination and the freedom from worry. Such confidence is bound to portend trouble for the fascinating painterly creatures of Elesby's parallel universe, and I can't wait to watch it happen.
