John Hurrell – 6 March, 2012

This Dale Frank show is of interest because of the way the Gow Langsford staff have hung seven of his varnish paintings in the main gallery. All are of the same height, and normally they are presented quite separately. This time there are six close together on one wall (but not touching) - and another round the corner, visible from the Lorne St front window. It seems to continue the line.

The presentation works really well. There is a vaguely suggested horizon so that the separate canvases adhere and become a whopper landscape where Salvador Dali (think ‘melting watches’) meets Jackson Pollock’s drips. The wide horizontal image is a linked row of writhing swirls of gushing marbled effects, feathery cilia and incredibly fine-lined wiggling loops that morph into clotted knots. A strange cohesion results even though there is no single dominant colour. Somehow the tumbling chromatic agitations mingle with the clearer, multi-directional, viscous trickles to create unity and generate a complex, oozy but highly suggestive, panorama.

Frank is particularly skilled at manipulating the different stages of drying resin so that the sticky puddles of liquid pigment don’t turn muddy or dissolve. Instead they streak, causing the traversing fine fingers or rivulets to interlock with or bleed into other malleable layers. The pools of poured on coloured and congealed treacle also dry at different speeds, often contracting to leave seemingly combed lines. They look like a form of drawn but subtracted cross-hatching but in fact are chemically induced.

If you enjoy looking into flickering fires and admire paint that’s liquid like eels, glossy, buckled and convulsive, there is plenty of detail here to mesmerise you and interpretatively engage with - especially when you stand back. Highly evocative in its suggestion of primal cosmic forces and psychedelia, and overtly sensual in its marbled intricacy, it is well worth a visit.

John Hurrell

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