Ayling and Conroy at City Gallery, Leicester, 2007
For me this exhibition at City Gallery felt like an ‘art gallery show.’ It filled the white space easily without being too brash or loud, which is unlike what I have perhaps become accustomed to with Ayling and Conroy’s previous works and installations. (I’m thinking particularly about Eyesore Sundae, an installation that filled Spectacle Gallery in Birmingham to bursting with its loud acid house music, fluorescent lights and ball pool, various themed rooms and tunnels and turns with karaoke at the preview.) This show felt different, slicker, less in your face. Paintings hung on white walls, sculptures filled the gallery floor and there were two small plinths with small brightly coloured figures upon them. It appeared well thought out; the show looked comfortable in the space and each piece looked like they belong with each other, although each work was quite different it was coherent.
However, on closer inspection, there was something odd happening, the paintings were not as innocent as they first appeared. Each painting in the series 36 Views of Mr Mountain are painted in a particular style, oil on canvas, the compositions and subject matter of the paintings were unusual and did not accompany the style in which they were painted; Japanese in delicate subject and Western in clumpy style. They are the result of the anomalous combination of Bob Ross and his step-by-step guide to painting and 18th century Japanese painter, Hokusai. The sculptures on the floor too grew in intensity and distraction and became obstacles to narrate in both space and story, in particular Curio Island version 4, a play on a bird watching booth, where you can sit and observe the gallery from a new hidden perspective, the blue balls the once seemed to buoyantly surround this booth change into a flood of colour, a disturbance in the sea of white, as they begin to surround you in menacing manner. The small neon reclining nudes aloft white plinths epitomise for me the Ayling and Conroy within this show; the blends of the authorative white gallery plinth with the small Morph like figurines.
This exhibition at first may not strike you as typically Ayling and Conroy, yes their use of colour, knowing nods to culture and art history with a touch of youth is still there but it is more subtle. It is not as immediate. It is not the case either that it appears watered down, it is not Ayling and Conroy diluted, it is Ayling and Conroy exploring how they can still keep their style and meanings within their works and its display, but play with it. Just as their work plays with the viewer and their role along side the art works, they have also played with the pre-conceptions of their work. They have shown confidently that they can manipulate an exhibition space as well as their audience and the interpretations of their work.
Ayling and Conroy seem to understand themselves and their directions more with every passing year. Their work is developing and moulding into something very important. They have a distinct style and subject matter and they have the ability to let it evolve. Their work is intelligent, charismatic, mnemonic and fun and one can’t help but be excited at the thought of where this pair will take us.
death of the author