SIMON AVERILL
'SPLITTER'

The title of the exhibition - “Splitter” - refers to an occurrence when a photon of light comes into contact with a clear reflective surface and splits the beam of light in two. A photon might pass through this surface or it might bounce back; it’s impossible to know with any certainty which of these it will do.

In reference to this, the work engages with an uncertainty and fallibility of seeing and the senses. The paintings in the exhibition resist any singular reading or interpretation. Instead they allow for a diffusion and intermingling of multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points. Within these paintings, particles cluster and scatter across the glassy surface of the work. A translucent glazed overlay seals the paintings, adding luminosity and a synthetic soft glow. This is iridescent work, realised through slender and elongated landscape proportions. The work itself seems to be in possession of agency and attitude. Colours have shimmering or reflective characteristics and are fluid. An encounter is saccadic. It is noted that humans and many animals rarely look at a scene in fixed steadiness. Instead, quick, simultaneous movements of both eyes in the same direction ensue. In an encounter with this work, eyes are inclined to move around the surface.

Averill’s exquisite abstractions are less concerned with meaning and representation and do not attempt to replicate already settled forms. Rather the work is concerned with a dissemination of phenomena through a ‘tactile’ seeing, affect and embodiment. Seeing, like memory, is of course, capable of mistakes and of being wrong. In actuality we perceive very little of what is being looked at and like memory, perception is often susceptible to misconception. In human eyesight, the density of receptors on the retina only allows us to see a small fragment in high resolution. The fovea is only capable of resolving about 3 degrees of visual angle - which is about the size of an old 50p coin held at arm’s length. The eye has to constantly move around to build up an overall image that the brain can then reassemble and make sense of.

In Averill’s paintings distance and division of fore and background are difficult to gauge. A dynamic iteration of data, fast shape or form, synthetic space or scattered light, heightens abstraction and ambiguity. The work does not inhabit space easily; it might be said that the work emits a restlessness. Cell fragments split, agglutinate and form intricate meshes; nerve cells intensely wire together or intra-connect. The paintings would seem to oscillate, moving continuously and with such rapidity so as to be indiscernible to the eye. Shapes and lines shimmer and flicker and at the same time are calm, persistent, keen. A relay of activity occurs between painting and viewer. The eyes and body would seem to connect with positions and movements of the painting. It might also be said that the paintings in turn connect with the position and movement of a viewer. There is almost the sense that the work shifts shape when not looked at, teasing at the limits of our peripheral vision. Looking at the paintings is compelling; it could be said we are woven into them or that the paintings somehow ‘get into us’. As Teresa Brennan notes, “the transmission of affect, if only for an instant, alters the biochemistry and neurology of the subject. The “atmosphere” or the environment literally gets into the individual. Physically and biologically, something is present that was not there before”.

Gillian Wylde. 2014.


Gillian Wylde is an artist and senior lecturer in Fine Art at Falmouth University.