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That experience has led Andrews to spend more than three years
committed to the subject matter he amassed while there, in the form
of initial sketches and watercolours, then photographs of these.
Transposed to Norfolk too were handfuls of the red sand, and clumps
of spinifex as mementos.
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| Laughter Uluru (Ayers Rock):
the Cathedral I. 1985. Acrylic on canvas 96 x 108 inches. |
Andrews, famous for early Sixties figurative works such as The
Colony Room, later paintings of mysterious piers, and, latterly,
for paintings of scenes to which one may 'belong', realised a longfelt
wish about Uluru. The ten days' exposure to his retina led him to
produce an impressive volume of documentation, of which the five
large paintings shown in Anthony d'Offay's spacious new rooms are
only the first stage. Andrews is now working on a major new painting
which takes the same series further, in which he seeks to represent
the gradual metamorphosis that changing light conveys over the rock.
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| Permanent Water. Mutidjula,
by the Kunia massif (Maggie Springs, Ayers Rock). 1985-86. Acrylic
on canvas. 7 feet x 8 feet x 6 inches. |
There is a sense of wonder in Andrews' paintings but little romanticism.
Time exposure is a very critical factor, carefully measured by Andrews.
He experienced the potency, the latent spiritual energy of the place
and its history in a contemplative way, without short-cut methods
of working and with a total objectivity. Some of the profiles which
emerge in Andrews' sketches seem to belie the whole apparatus of
tourism and assimilation by ready representation. These views are
not simply other angles, but record what may be permanently non-assimilable.
Michael Spens
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