The Box in Plymouth, recently awarded the Art Fund museum of the year prize, is hosting a major retrospective of Gillian Ayres, the radical British painter who died in 2018 at age 88. Titled A Life in Colour, the exhibition spans seven decades of her work, from a teenage landscape to large-scale abstract pieces created in her north Devon studio.
Artist's Fearless Commitment to Painting
Hannah Hooks, contemporary art curator at The Box, described Ayres as "formidable and brilliant." She said: "Her fearless commitment to painting is something to be celebrated. She came of age in a postwar British art world dominated by men and remained entirely faithful to painting as it went in and out of fashion. Gillian was a painter’s painter. The fact that she isn’t better known by more people is something we hope to change."
Colour as a Spiritual Experience
Hooks noted that installing the paintings was a privilege. "The colour knocks you off your feet. It’s incredible to be surrounded by it and to sense the movement of Gillian’s body, the way she’s creating balance and tension. There’s chaos and beauty in this riot of colour. She spoke of how colour made her feel heady; it was almost a spiritual experience for her."
Ayres did not want viewers to intellectualise her work or search for representation. "I think it’s really important in the world at the moment to find the space and time to look, to observe, to enjoy using your eyes, not to try to make sense of things but to really delight in a visual experience," Hooks added.
Exhibition Highlights
Born in London in 1930, Ayres was inspired by Turner, Picasso, and Pollock. She became a significant figure in arts education and spent her last 30 years in north Devon, where her studio was described as a "cheery muddle of paint-spatter, house plants, stepladders, tins of colour and canvasses." The exhibition includes murals she created in the 1950s for a school dining hall in north London, which were later rediscovered under wallpaper in almost perfect condition.
Some pieces are vast, with oil paint applied so thickly that the scent lingers. Ayres' son, Sam Mundy, recalled the challenge of transporting large works: "We used to have to borrow an old pickup truck and two people would sit in the back holding on to the paintings. We’d drive up the very steep hill with hairpin bends and meet a lorry at the top."
Connection to Devon
Mundy said Ayres had a deep connection with the English West Country. "She liked western Britain. She liked the drama of the landscape and the coast. She liked the sunset over the water. She would be pleased that this exhibition is being staged here."
Gillian Ayres: A Life in Colour opens at The Box in Plymouth on Saturday and runs until 4 October.
