Matthew Varey, ‘Growing up in Hamilton’ at Transit Gallery

I had intended to report on this exhibition at some point over the weekend, only to be thwarted by my negligence in bringing my trusty piece-of-shit camera along for the ride. Having just returned from a second viewing complete with stealth-photography, I am now happy to get on with the show.

Matthew Varey, Growing up in Hamilton, 2006-2007

Matthew Varey’s ‘Growing up in Hamilton’ at Transit Gallery is a locally-satisfying survey of cheerfully abstracted landscapes that, at their most successful, reveal delicious layers of ephemerality that may be due in part to the significant time lapses identified with each work. Said identifications also reveal a lamentable lack of creativity with titles, but at least said titles leave you in no doubt whatsoever about the content.

Matthew Varey, Post Rain Collision, 2005-2008

And perhaps it’s a tad unfair of me to be overly critical of the titles (it can’t be helped though, I’m a wordy kind of gal), but then Varey turns around and gives us such gems as Comet Drop in Ancaster and Post Rain Collision (above) which only prove that a title can be descriptive without being a didactic door in the face. The latter painting in particular is also a good demonstration of Varey’s greater strength: namely, his ability to control his medium when he doesn’t feel it necessary to rupture his technique for the sake of empty drama, more often than not on a significantly large scale.

See, I love painting for the raw presentation of its decisions in terms of colour selection, how one combines marks and the boggling degree of expertise that can be found in something so seemingly erratic as this. One can look at Varey’s work and see that precise knowledge in spades, which is fantastic; but when he then applies a streak of dull, disappointing black or interrupts a passage with a stonking blob of paint that refuses to be ignored, it has the whiff of both an accident and a lie. He cuts himself off because of the sense of rupture (I’m guessing here), to reach for something we might call abject, but when those moments happen in the context of a painting that is otherwise painstakingly, I’d dare say lovingly, executed, the gesture becomes an empty one and it leaves me a little cold.

Matthew Varey, The Small Apartment Houses of the Hamilton Mountain, 2007-2008

Of course, being who I am, I’m always keen to savour elements of drawing when they appear, and this one instance was a real favourite of mine for being a rendering so cliched that it can’t help but evoke some of the more fundamental points of drawing in itself. As a case in point, the same motif recurs again in another painting on show but was eked out with a paintbrush and was far less satisfying as a result.

Growing up in Hamilton (detail)

The gallerist and the artist made a wise decision is putting this particular painting, the show’s namesake (the first image here shows the work in its entirety), at the very start of the circuit, because it is easily the best on display. Unlike some of his other pieces, there are little to no false moments to be found, even the black works to a good purpose and his technical expertise shines through in that gorgeous yellow zip on the horizon. You’ll see that sort of virtuosity elsewhere in the show - the sexy, glitter-heavy Hydro Fields in the adjoining space is well worth a look as well - but not with quite the same lack of interruptions as one gets from this.

Political Post-script

Now that a federal election is very well bloody nigh upon us, I’m relieved and pleased to see the number of Canadian artists of all disciplines putting out the call for heightened awareness and debate surrounding the Harper government’s explicit disdain for culture in our nation; regardless of where one stands of the issue of public funding for the arts, there at least needs to be an active dialogue on the question rather than the present silence save for those few sectors that happen to be in the know on these matters.

To that effect:

GG Award-winning playwright Wajdi Mouawad’s open letter to Stephen Harper - An impassioned and even delightfully scary call to arms on behalf of Canadian artists; you can read Life on Pi author Yann Martel’s statement on the same page but it’s nowhere near as stirring and wonderful.

Press Conference held earlier today calling for a dialogue on the arts in the coming election - The panel of six convened during TIFF included Atom Egoyan, Karen Kain and that dreamy ex-television-Mountie Paul Gross, and if Constable Benton Fraser isn’t gonna make you perk up and pay attention, I don’t know what will - but I’m sure we’ll think of something.

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