MIKE NICHOLLSStripped Bare

MIKE NICHOLLS

25 July - 30 August 2009

Stripped Bare

Bulk and mass are not characteristics normally associated with grace. Yet Mike Nicholls achieves just such a balancing act in a practice that now spans thirty years and is richly composed of painting, drawing, etching and, perhaps most notably, timber sculpture. Through this period, beginning with his years as a founding member of Melbourne’s ROAR Studios, Nicholls has slowly cultivated his quietly methodical practice; paring it back, and reducing it to an elemental visual vocabulary. He has developed, over this time, a set of identifiable signs – like hieroglyphics – through which he articulates his vision. Nicholls’ style is now compellingly unique and deeply personal, yet it speaks to us all on a spiritual and primal level.

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To put Nicholls’ work into perspective we must travel back to the eighteenth century, and the Age of Enlightenment. It was in this period that reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy of authority. It was an age in which many principles, such as truth, democracy and liberalism were seen to be the way forward to civilisation. It coincided with Neo-Classicism in art, where a return to the Greek ideals of balance, order and harmony were seen as the means by which society would be advanced.

Since then this unshakeable faith in the progress of man has been disputed from many quarters. Mankind’s boundless capacity to destroy itself with increasing precision and technological savviness has revealed the brutality that still lies within. The animal that eighteenth century idealists sought to repress has proven untameable, as attested to by the carnage of the twentieth, and now, twenty-first centuries.

An astute, if fictional, reflection on man as primal animal was made in Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel Planet of the Apes. In spite of the extraordinary technological advancements of man it was his fate to de-evolve to the state of primal beast. Something of Boulle’s curse lingers in Nicholls’ fawning works. It is de-evolution that drives, or perhaps haunts, his practice. His reductive sculptural technique is rooted in an underlying language of primitive gesture. The figures we see in his works are stripped bare – free of the baggage of civilisation and the adornments of technology. Here, want is expressed through outstretched arms; and possession is signified by closed arms. Primal needs are rendered as blunt gestures: grabbing, clutching, clenching.

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Large block shapes with rounded corners dominate, and the line between figure and landscape is blurred. In many cases the figure becomes the landscape, or assumes its attributes: rugged, weathered, full of mass and substance. An elemental force. The timber in his sculptural works is selected for its natural composition, and Nicholls harnesses its knots, flows and grain to give his pieces form. But as these forms reduce in complexity the need for attention grows, as Nicholls admits: ‘When you get minimal you have to get controlled; the piece has to be spot on, or it won’t work’. While employing a variety of timbers, Cypress and Australian Hardwood are among Nicholls’ favourites – the former for its long grain and lightness and the latter for its pliability and density. The surface is sometimes worked with paint – either a black oxide or a white wash – but the timber retains its warmth and allure.

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Nicholls was educated in the early 1980s in the manner of formal abstraction. In the early ROAR years he made a shift to figuration, but through subsequent reduction of the human form he arrived at his own language of abstraction. It is only in recent years that Nicholls has returned to a discernable figuration, yet it is most often the case in his painted works that the shift of a single element will render the entire piece inexplicable. It nevertheless maintains an elusive enigma; a capacity to evade simple identification and yet feel intuitively familiar. Nicholls’ interest in the primitive, and his growing (or returning) fascination for the minimal is seen nowhere more clearly than in his large painted still lifes and landscapes. Where his canvasses were once a mottled constellation of angular, rhythmic shapes, they are now all-consuming oceans of flattened colour. They share with Constructivism a reduced palette and a relentless search for elemental signs: a visual language of shapes that eliminates needless diatribe and communicates directly with the soul.

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Trying to identify the geography of his painted places is pointless – they represent vast continental land masses, drifting slowly through time and space immemorial. Each canvas, however, speaks of a unique regionality, communicated through brushstroke, palette and luminosity. But whether they evoke desert, bush or atmosphere, all exude the distinct aroma of Australia. At his Narre Warren North studio Nicholls is surrounded by rolling land masses and sweeping voids – gullies as far as the eye can see. It is beautiful but it is also quietly and nobly melancholic; characteristics that saturate his landscapes. They represent an impression rather than a document, as Nicholls says: ‘I want to paint the feel of the landscape rather than the literal landscape’. While abstract and unplacable we intuit the land mass, and we understand the place without geography; a physicality without substance, and an eternal grace without melodrama. The chaos of man has been silenced, and only the wounds in the earth remain.

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Nicholls’ serene sculptures similarly speak of placidity and dignity but have been created through acts of brutality. The violence of the chainsaw replaces the deftness of the brush, and Nicholls fashions his material as might an ironmonger: hammering, beating and moulding until the form is subdued. Nevertheless he is able to draw exquisite precision from these raw materials, and graceful, sweeping lines that summon the majestic. It is only in recent years that Nicholls has been able to delineate a relationship between his painting and sculpture, as the structural imprint of his physical forms come to bear on the linear. This effect is largely achieved through a shared base template of abstraction. ‘The abstract has to generate first for the piece to work’, says Nicholls. ‘To get the feeling you want’.

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This ‘feeling’ is at the core of Nicholls’ practice. Increasingly, his work is becoming ‘more spiritual, more to do with humanity. It comes from the unconscious’. As his iconography simplifies, so too, does it subscribe increasingly to pantheism – a sense that the divine resides in all matter.

A repeating motif in the figurative work is the hunched shoulders and stooped head seen from the back, which represents the artist. Standing shoulder to shoulder with this crude figure we share his view on the world, looking out at the world around. He appears clutching objects to his chest, sometimes tall, totemic objects – and sometimes he faces us. But his face remains a cleaved blank – a featureless and smooth mask. He is the archetype of the human soul, who guides our journey through this silent landscape of elemental forms.

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The mask is accompanied by another recurring motif: the shield. Both of these tribal forms are a means for Nicholls of inserting a physical barrier between himself and the world. In holding up a mask or finding protection behind a shield, he presents an alternative face to society, while hiding his true self deep within. These symbols are also emblematic of the soul – an elemental form that represents the essence of humanity. His interest in tribal primitivism has emerged in part, as it did for Picasso and Braque, from an artist’s need to discover a truth that has been lost in Western globalisation. But it has also derived from Nicholls’ years spent travelling outback Australia and working with indigenous communities. In seeking elemental truths, he describes aboriginal art as ‘a good place to start looking’.

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The solemnity of the soul-form in some figures is offset by a childlike abundance of energy in others, which nevertheless retain a pronounced dignity – tall and firm and upright. In many cases they literally tower over us like sentinels, or primeval totem poles. In spite of this sometimes shamanistic appearance the works retain a sweetness, with figures – unaware or deliberately ignoring our presence – unselfconsciously going about their business. Where primal needs have been fulfilled they engage in play, and a common motif is the figure inverted.

In inverting the figure Nicholls introduces a remarkable degree of delicacy and poise to these roguish, lumpen forms. There is a fine balancing act taking place, and for all their solidity we feel that they are precariously perched, and at any moment may topple. Some works, meanwhile, are rendered in sweeping curves with flat, smooth surfaces. We are reminded of Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space – that sleek, elongated form that is forever reaching upward in an elegant blur. Nicholls’ Floating 2007 and Diving Figure 2004 are similarly abstracted. We discern a figurative logic from the stretched arms, legs and suggestion of a head, but the rest becomes a passing blaze of polished timber and grain.

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We might think of these forms as being essentially masculine and male but in fact many of the figures are the opposite. They are graceful, curvaceous, sensual and mysterious – characteristics commonly associated with the feminine. Such contradictions and multitudes of meaning serve only to give the work depth and broaden its appeal. We are greeted here not only by the rich patina of timber but a charismatic exploration of humanity – in all its foibles. The skin of the work may be addressed with paint or varnish or it may not, but we are placed in no doubt that beneath the warm surface lustre beats a massive, gentle heart. In spite of bared teeth, clenched fist or introspective pose, it is impossible not to be beguiled and charmed by these places and creatures, and the stories they tell.

Simon Gregg, 2009

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LIST OF WORKS

Cover (detail), Page 11Diving figure, 2004Painted pine213 x 105.5 x 40cm

Page 2Red torso, 2007Red gum94 x 32.5 x 13cm

Page 3Black torso, 2007Yellow box, iron oxide, patina powder96 x 42.5 x 21cm

Page 7, topUntitled, 2005Oil on linen80 x 140cm

Page 7, bottomGorge, 2005Oil on linen160 x 160cm

Page 8 (detail), Page 9, rightParked, 2006Oil on linen150 x 260cm

Page 9, leftPort, 2006Oil on linen150.5 x 260cm

Page 10Shielding spirit, 2007Painted pine154.5 x 58 x 29cm

Page 12Human soul, 2007Cypress56 x 58 x 29cm

Page 13My protector, 2007Painted cypress101.5 x 65 x 19cm

Page 14Bust, 2005Red gum118 x 56 x 35cm

Page 15Innuendo, 2006Sugar gum127 x 62 x 32cm

Page 17Floating, 2007Painted cypress208 x 82 x 57.5cm

Page 18Soul shadow, 2007Pine75 x 60 x 9cm

Coast line, 2004Oil on linen52.5 x 36cm

Falling, 2007Red gum108 x 48 x 25cm

Floating, 2006Oil on linen150.5 x 250cm

Kimberley Coast, 2004Oil on linen37.2 x 73cm

Limbs in Limbo, 2000Grey box246 x 44.5 x 42cm

Not just black and white, 2004Oil on linen18 x 56.6cm

Spit, 2003Oil on linen37.8 x 67.8cm

Untitled, 2005Painted cypress167 x 55 x 33cm

Untitled, 2002Yellow box480 x 97.5 x 47cm

All works collection of the artist

Page 5Installation view, Mike Nicholls studio

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Mike NichollsStripped Bare

25 July – 30 August 2009

Gippsland Art Gallery, SaleDirector: Anton VardyCurator: Simon Gregg

All photography byGeoff Parrington

Published by Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale68 Foster StreetSale 3850 Victoriawellington.vic.gov.au/gallery

First published 2009

All rights reserved. This publication is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquires should be directed to the publisher.

© Mike Nicholls, Simon Gregg, Geoff Parrington and Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale

First printing edition of 500

Design by Lesley ScottPrinted by Whirlwind

Paper stock: Envirocare 300gsm (cover); Envirocare 115gsm (pages)

Typeset in Century Schoolbook

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:Gregg, SimonMike Nicholls: Stripped Bare/Simon Gregg

ISBN 978-0-9806306-2-6 (pbk.).

1. Nicholls, Mike – Exhibitions

Other Authors/Contributors:Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale

759.9945

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