Blokes in Wonderland
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING
The wonderful Rogue Gallery has moved. It is now to be found opposite the Kino-Teatr on Norman Road in St Leonards. The charismatic gallery owner, Ray Gange, is launching his new art-space with a knockout showing of the paintings of the highly acclaimed British painter Ray Richardson.
THE POETRY OF CORTINAS
Richardson’s paintings take us into a bygone world of blokedom. Dodgy men and distinctly dated cars are beautifully arranged into canvases that drip with the visual poetry of geezerland. His compositional skill is stunning: he divides canvases in ways that make his pictures buzz with a weird cinematic drama: the paintings are almost film-stills. You half expect Jason Statham or maybe even Bob Hoskins to be at a diagonal to a Ford Cortina. Or The Sweeney to crash the frame.
Yet his work is about more than tough types. There is an oddness to this world: not a landscape of urban anti-heroes: it is more spaced out, more like retro-gangsters go on a mystery tour.
And then there is Brian. Brian is Richardson’s English bull terrier who was very present on opening night. He features in many of the works. In many ways Brian seems the perfect creature for this south-east London world that is always tinged with menace. He seems like the living embodiment of Bill Sikes’ dog ‘Bullseye’ from Oliver Twist (Dickens would surely love this show!) But, as with so much about Ray, Brian the dog is not what he seems: we found him to be an utterly delightful chap with more interest in his master’s bag of carrots than the dark arts of doggydom.
PAINTING IN ENGLISH
It is perhaps a bit too easy to get carried away in defining Ray’s swarthy South London milieu. The ‘sarf London’ stuff can be overdone. What struck us most is that he is just such a great painter. He draws with great economy but simultaneously with constant little surprises and technique twists, like oil-wash over conte crayon. The painter he most reminded us of was R B Kitaj but without all the loud Americana. He has Kitaj’s deft outlines and flat colour, but there is almost always that indefinable English tang. The taste of the estuary.
He is, ultimately, unique. He has gone his own way over a lifetime of painting – as if art trends and theories were just so much pointless hot air, which of course, they are. Never mind the bull terriers, go and see it!
The show ‘Londain’t’ is on at Rogue Gallery, 42 Norman Road, until 10 November. For more information: rogue-gallery.co.uk/exhibits/londaint-by-ray-richardson
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