What am I lookin' at?

After walking for an hour and twenty through the April sun, a metal tub full of ice and cans of G&T was a heavenly sight. I cracked one open while reading the exhibition text. I’m at Alison Jacques Gallery for the Roy Oxlade show and the place is already packed with tweed blazers, suede shoes, and impossible hair-dos. There was a man dressed all in white leaning in the corner of the gallery sipping away at his can.

Infanta with Black Easel, 1989

Looking upon Roy Oxlade’s works, my first impression was that these are nothing more than the scribblings of sugar-rushing child. Haphazard forms that… kind of look like something? The longer I stared at these oblique compositions, however, a whole vista of texture and colour engulfed me. The subjects in his paintings are indistinct enough that they could be anything. But they’re almost always domestic items, however uncertain. It was so welcome to see no titles or text next to any of the pieces, just an artwork on a wall inviting you in.

With each painting I was falling headlong into a chasm of chaotic brushstrokes and confusing shapes. Is that a kettle or a handbag? A vase or a skull? Ladder or diving board? The forms in the foreground are but a front for the magic happening in the back. Layers of marbled colour blended so viscerally that they fight over each other for air. And then he simply paints right over them with the ugly uniformity of cement, the brilliance underneath desperately peeking through wherever Roy allows it to. Cat Food by King Crimson was blaring in my ears while looking at one of the paintings. All throughout the song the piano parts are neurotically all over the place until right at the end where it coalesces into a twinkling lullaby. It takes a lot of skill to play like shit on purpose. This is how I feel about Roy Oxlade’s oeuvre.  

There’s undeniable velocity to his brushwork, marks careening and ricochetting like shrapnel from a demolition site. One can’t help but be carried away by this tidal wave of painterly debris. Where the pigment is smeared flat and dry in some places, it bulges wet and tumescent in others. Flecks of white season the void. It’s all gloriously and deafeningly noisy.

Don't know what this is even called...

Wandering around the gallery I noticed that the man in white sipping his G&T hadn’t moved from his vantage in the corner. Was he drinking from the same can? Feeling his eyes bore into my spine, I was hypnotised by a bowl of apples (or maybe it was cherries or red snooker balls) suspended in black over which a green halo cautiously leapt. The shading was uncannily one-dimensional and the whole composition vibrated as a result. Divinely simple compared to the rest of his work.

Nude and Black Spots, 1980

The second room in Alison Jacques looks like something out of THX 1138; vertiginously high, medically lit ceilings. An abundance of colour in the pieces in this room counteracted its sterile luminosity. I was trying to make heads or tails of a painting featuring three figures in various states of degeneracy when I was approached by painter Pranavi Agarwal for a comment. She sported a red leather jacket and earrings so big you could hang them like chandeliers off a ceiling.

“He’s definitely an artist’s artist,” she responded to my opinions on Roy Oxlade, “my non-artist friends would hate this. But he has a real understanding of tone.”

“What do you mean?” I went.

“He’s created these over long period of time and he knows where to add colour or emptiness.”

“Interesting you say that ‘cause I think he’s banged each one out in about an hour or so.”

“He definitely works in bursts,” she explained, “but it looks like he does little bits on multiple pieces while the others are drying. Have you seen his wife Rose Wylie’s show at the RA?”

I admitted that I hadn’t, to her great surprise. Someone nearby with strawberry blonde hair and a beaming smile chimed into the conversation, waxing lyrical and at length about the RA show.

“How do you know all of this?” Pranavi asked her.

“I’m Rose Wylie’s grand-daughter,” she revealed casually.

“Wait!” gasped Pranavi, “So Roy’s your granddad?”

She smiled and nodded like one who’d heard this line of questioning before, introducing herself as Rose.

“So are you an Oxlade or a Wylie?” asked Pranavi once the shock had worn off.

“Both, I’m Oxlade-Wylie.” Or was it Wylie-Oxlade? Ah it doesn’t matter.

“Do you find this kind of thing stuffy then?” I eventually asked, “Being related to the artist and all?”

“Not at all,” replied Rose, “It’s just good to see these works in their proper context rather than in a mouldy shed or on top of a chest of drawers covered in cobwebs…”

I found myself gravitating towards a painting on the back wall. The brushwork in this was significantly looser, Roy’s vapid marks disintegrating into a swarm of colour taking flight. The mass moved through nebulous clouds of weird shading towards the top right of the scene. I let myself be borne away to wherever they were going.

As someone who finds great joy in the mundane, I was particularly taken by the domesticity in Roy Oxlade’s works. Everyday objects of the kitchen drawer variety are elevated to strange and mystical proportions, radiating their secret lives which we only very rarely notice. Once the veneer of ubiquitous utility has been peeled away and you can perceive an object for what it is rather than what it ought to be, it’s impossible to see it as its former self. Let a spatula move you spiritually and see if you can forget about it.

On my way out I was surprised to find the man in the corner surveying his domain over a can of G&T had left. The next time I saw him was in my dreams…