The invitation to Bob's exhibition at the Annandale Galleries in 2004 featuring the work '360'. Click image to enlarge.

Bill Gregory

On '360'

I am writing this with a painting from the upcoming exhibition of Bob Brighton propped up next to me. It is a small painting measuring 26 x 26 centimetres. It is divided up by hand into 900 1 x 1 centimetre adjoining squares, 30 squares per side. Each square has been hand painted in a colour which appears to repeat itself often, albeit in sometimes different shades. There is the faint trace of pencil underneath where the artist has drawn up the grid before applying paint. The sides of the painting are white and depending on one's angle of vision present as a white line of varying thickness along the edges.

The basic colurs include two distinct shades of opposing orange, several pinks, shades of grey and what appear to be some burgundy/browns. If I shift the painting slightly in my hands, everything changes. The browns are now bright gold, some of the pinks are clearly blue while shades of pink which seemed close in value in one light are now clearly and unequivocally green. The more flourescent colours under one light are now matt in texture and the matt colours are shining like diamonds. Clearly this is an artist who understands the power of relations in colour - how it changes according to what is next to it, the light and the angle from which it is viewed.

Turning the painting now over in my hands, I am struck by the quality of every aspect of the presentation of the work. The composition and tension across the stretcher is perfect - taut but not tight or strained. Turning the painting around, even the back is worthy of the word artwork as the title numbers '360' in this case, are painted in a floursecent orange on a black tache of paint and the year 2004 also in orange on a black tache below, with the signature in between. There are 16 tacks holding the canvas and two keys per corner to adjust tension. The effect of turning the painting back to it's painting surface is to see the work as an object. Every part, including the construction of the stretcher, the flax canvas, the paint and even the tacks somehow indivisible from the whole. There is something organic, even tribal about the obvious ritual undergone by the artist to produce such a thing.

Bill Gregory
Sydney, Australia
2004