Wrath, the show, and the works that comprise it, skirts around all the great themes of life, love, morality and finally mortality. The works themselves do not release their secrets easily, and they demand a longer look. Joy, beauty, terror and mystery are all to be found within these works, along with a certain sense of a beginning of a journey, Endless Yet Never.
Angus Nivison
Angus Nivison is one of the nicest people you will ever meet, his good humour and easy going demeanour make him an artist with a lot of friends and plenty of loyal supporters. But his work is far from easy going. It’s often very demanding and dark revealing the deeper side of the artist that comes out in the studio.
Much is made of Angus’ links with the land and there is no doubt that his first hand experiences with elemental forces have had a big influence. Drought, rain, or lack of, bushfires, wild winds, dramatic scenery, glorious sunsets, the reflection of the moon in a dam are all only too real, the grandeur and the beauty, the cruelty and destruction.
This is his lived experience and, while his paintings and drawings have the look of this world, it is in his titles that you see humanity is his real subject, the brilliance and stupidity, the pain and the ecstacy, life and death.
WRATH is the title of this exhibition, a strangely vengeful and angry choice from this gentle man, but it is not surprising, as anyone who loves humanity can also wish divine chastisement on those who care not.
Endless Yet Never is a line stolen from Colin McCahon’s last painting that he got from Revelations in the King James Bible. Plenty of wrath there! You would think that these pictures might thus be very dark, but as always, there is a light still burning bright in the darkness. In fact these paintings are as beautiful as ever. Try as he might Nivison at heart is an Christopheroptimist.Hodges
