T J Bateson is an artist and curator who has been exhibiting in Australia for more than 15 years. Originally trained as a printmaker and drawer, he has developed interest in a broad range of different mediums in his art practice.
Described by art critic Eugene Barilo von Reisberg as “…interesting, innovative and inventive”, Bateson has explored painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and computer technology throughout his exhibition history.
Pixel
Pixel, his quietly impressive new exhibition at Tacit Contemporary Art in Melbourne, responds to the distance between an artist’s mark and the “digitisation of contemporary imaging and thought, seeing a return to a modernist aesthetic manually celebrating form and colour”. (T J Bateson, April 2011).
Bateson explores the inverse of the sharpened technological imaging of digital photography – the magnification of images to the point of abstraction.
But the works featured in the exhibition are not the transference of magnified abstract photographic images to canvas. It is the investigation of the concept of distance between paint and technology that interests and inspires the artist.
Through the exploration of colour and low tonality synonymous with his work, Bateson creates painted surfaces using a limited palette. The result is a layering of abstract fields of pixels, offset repetition and subtle shifts of colour.
Within a low contrast index, shifts in textures become more distinct. His large (1.6 x 1.9 metre) canvases are a superb miasma of suggestion and subtle references to abstract landscapes, the waft and weave of rug-making, animal hide, snakeskin and, in some instances, are redolent of the multi-layering of certain Australian indigenous artists, Gloria Petyarre in particular.
The smaller canvasses (0.9 x 1.2 metre) continue the subtle variances and offset repetition of layered application.
In an interesting new departure, the beautiful Tiled Pixels #1, #2 and #3 find Bateson applying paint directly onto aluminium, providing a radically different surface. As one would expect from the artist, the surface sheen is muted by the application of several subtle layers of low tonal paint. But there remains a layered depth and matted glow to the works.
A return to paint
The past few years have seen Bateson work in various mediums, including his video work Woven Figures at Guildford Lane Gallery in 2009 and the (mainly) photographic/technology-created exhibition Veiled in Plain Sight in 2010. Pixel sees the artist return to painting, with the entire exhibition having been created in recent months.
But it is also a continuation of Bateson’s themes, ideas, concepts and inspirations of previous work and exhibitions.
Having studied and trained as a printmaker, working predominantly with monotones resulted in the necessary exploration of low and high contrasts.
Slight percentage changes of the concentration of inks or the pressure of the printing press presented subtle changes of shade and colour. Slight changes to the position of the plate presented offset or, as Bateson himself describes, ‘broken moments of pattern’.
It is the subtle changes of hue and these broken moments of pattern that Bateson has continued to explore in his art practice. Pixel continues this exploration and, as a body of work, presents an exhibition of beauty and quiet contemplation.
The exhibition runs at Tacit Contemporary Art, Melbourne until 21 May.
Sources
- Interview with T J Bateson by Keith Lawrence, April 2011
- Eugene Barilo von Reisberg, ‘tjbateson@tacit’, Arts Diary 365
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
Join the Conversation