Canberra Times Art Review - "Multi–layered Images Weave an Authentic Vision"
The Knaves Progress, by Andrew Antoniou, at Stephanie Burns Fine Art, Yarralumla, until November 11.
Andrew Antoniou is an artist who revels in the idea of the theatre of the absurd. The series of work in this exhibition is loosely built around the idea of the knaves progress. The knave, in Antoniou’s art, is like Voltaire’s innocent hero, Candide, who travels through an absurd and nightmarish world and in his stumblings points to the path of wisdom. Antoniou’s knave is also like the harlequin, one for whom Picasso in the blue period, de Chirico and the surrealists all appear as fellow travellers.
The artist is possibly best described as an etcher and a draughtsman, who also paints. As an image maker he thinks as a printmaker, always working from a matrix and constantly layering his images. He is also an artist who enjoys a sense of grand scale and who is able to instil a grandeur and monumentality into his slightly absurd creations. The paintings are less convincing and the simplified forms occupy the space, rather than transform it and the surfaces of the paintings lack the complexity found in hie etchings.
Two of the better works at this exhibition are The Awakening, 2003 and Light Bringers 2004, both of which are large charcoal drawings. They are busy, crowded compositions, where we are invited to decipher the various symbols and visual clues and ultimately weave our own allegorical narrative. It is in these black and white works that he develops his greatest sense of dramatic impact.
Of the etchings, my two favourites at this exhibition are Jack of Diamonds, 2006 and Ghost Dog, 2005. Antoniou is an accomplished etcher and one who works in an English tradition, possibly reflecting his training at the London Central School of Art and Design. Against a deep velvety black background, he allows his figures to loom out, almost as if apparitions. It is also within these dark backgrounds that he conceals inscriptions, almost like subliminal messages. One of these reads: “The fool and the ghost dog.”
The etchings have dynamic and interesting surfaces which invite us to enter the work and to explore the imagery. Andrew Antoniou is a rare artist who has created a fantastic and absurd world which he has populated with strange and whimsical and slightly displaced figures. They seem to create their own reality with their own sense of logic, where there actions appear as deliberate, yet lacking in purpose. Antoniou is an artist whose work possesses an authentic visionary quality.