John Hurrell – 22 February, 2012

The twelve paintings Selina Foote presents here continue her interest in using portraits from the beginning of modernism to generate two varieties of small work. One has fields of quivering acute-tipped triangles painted on fine-grained Belgian linen, the other hovering polygons linked by parallel lines placed on stretched translucent silk made transparent through the application of size.

The triangular patterned ones look like collaged rearrangements of early Bridget Riley works, but with greater variation in triangle size. These works seem to ripple like thousands of spiky yachts crammed into a bay, or roll in a vertically scrolled motion with trembling sharpened tips.

Foote’s linked polygons on the other hand, usually rendered in ochre or oxide colours, seem to allude to Mel Bochner in their shapes, Kenneth Martin in their parallel lines, and Sigmar Polke in their use of translucency. Their plastic-like silk exploits the shadows cast on the wall behind the paint and the wood grain of the stretchers, while the softness of the faint grey-brown silk makes the configurations seem like hunched over figures or loosely tied knots. Some hybrids exist as well, where the flickering triangles are clear so that the wall is visible behind them, and opacity and translucency are juxtaposed.

She has based these works on a painting Manet created in 1862 of a bustling crowd of people jammed into the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. Included in his rendered scene are portraits of many of his artist friends and a self portrait. Using a book of reproductions with enlarged details of these, Foote has constructed her abstractions by formulating a series of rules and processes, extending certain vectors and flat angular fragments within each chosen visage, and repeating key colours.

Close inspection shows these works to be hand painted without an industrial finish. There is a slight wobble to the line edge and hint of individual brush strokes in the resulting surface relief. Foote’s images are not clinical but have an attractive artisanal quality.

The stretching of the conceptual umbilical cord between generative Manet detail and completed Foote painting is the obvious question here, a teasing out of an origin that very soon is not detectable in the finished product. Firstly the artist has left no notebooks, documentation or diagrams explaining the details to gallery visitors so they have to take the word of gallerists and curator/writers who have been to her studio. Secondly, even if Foote did present contextual material for her audience elaborating on her method, would it really matter? Is the result on the walls so compelling that you are persuaded the way she makes these paintings is important, because it might not necessarily be the case?

Well obviously it is, but I think relying on mystification or hearsay is a bad thing, and that contextual material should be at hand near the works for people to look at, but not be part of the show. Of course we have the information at hand about Manet which I’ve just discussed, but ultimately the painted objects have to generate a fascination so that you are keen to know more detail about the process.

In a way, Foote is halfway between Simon Ingram and Dane Mitchell, one practice where the production is often demonstrated live in a gallery, and the other where we have to accept the word of the artist in terms of claims about magical spells etc. She could of course fake it, just make beautiful little geometric abstractions - only concentrating on compositional variations, and we’d be none the wiser - but the notion of beginning with a nineteenth century portrait and ending up with a zigzagging striped configuration (exemplifying modernism) intrigues. A rivetting metamorphosis.

John Hurrell

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