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The Millinery Works Art Gallery
CURRENT exhibition
INTERIORS paintings 1982 - 2007 by Eric Rimmington
For almost thirty years Eric Rimmington has lived in a tall Victorian house in North London. He has his studio in a room with a large, rectangular bay window facing north, looking across to other similar houses, with a view up and down the street through the sides of the bay. Surprisingly for such a large house, the garden is tiny, constricted by the proximity of the houses in the parallel street to the south. The paintings that the artist has gathered together for this exhibition go back almost to the beginning of his occupation of the house and with one exception are set within the studio or the garden. In an understated way that is typical of the artist, this work is a reflection on his life and work in this house with his partner, the poet Mary Michaels.
While primarily concerned with this space, the paintings carry references to the world outside the studio, or to interests and concerns which have been important to the artist throughout his working life. He has said that world events impinge on his state of mind, and that `war has haunted me’. But his personal beliefs are never overt, manifesting themselves only in his choice of objects to paint and the quality of illumination they receive. There are little things off to the edge of the canvas, beyond the centre, like those green spots in the machine at the optician’s that tests your field of vision.[1] The scraps of paper pinned to the wall are not there by accident. A reflection in water or glass may be a charming effect of the light or it may be evidence of something quite sinister.
The most surprising work is Mirror Image, the large self portrait of 1987, in which the artist is seated in front of the bay window, against the light. It is an unsettling picture, although the artist says it was intended to be a light-hearted, a celebration of seven years in his house. The tilting perspective, the symmetrical composition and the blue sky reflected in his spectacles give him an appearance of aloofness, which is misleading. It shows a man comfortable in his own skin and without personal vanity. The vapour trail of an aeroplane in the sky was a chance occurrence, but its appearance in the painting seems like a signifier of the modern world, with all its opportunities and threats.
Mirror Image was preceded by two other paintings, N16 (1982) and Looking East, Looking West, Looking East (1984). The former, a view of the houses opposite through a net curtain that obscures the lower storeys, was influenced by Rimmington’s reading of the French author and film-maker Alain Robbe-Grillet (b.1922), a once familiar name now little known in Britain outside university departments of French or film studies[2]. Robbe-Grillet wrote a novel called Jalousie, about a husband who spies on his wife and her alleged lover through the openings of a Venetian blind. The French have Venetian blinds, the English have net curtains, but nothing is visible behind the elaborate Victorian façades of this London street. Where Carel Weight would have painted anxious, disheveled figures on the pavement below, Rimmington avoids any suggestion of narrative; it’s the net curtain that creates the tension, denying our curious gaze.
1. A Visual Field Analyser
2. That said, Robbe-Grillet was the subject of `Art, Architecture and Cinema’, a celebration of his work and influence, at the Serpentine Gallery on 15 September 2007