THE CARNIVAL - Drawings London 1984

The Carnival is back in town with its host of bizarre and tawdry acts, reminiscences of the magic circus of Dr. Lao and the theatre of Mr. Beckman. 'The Hendersons with all be there, Lady Pablo, etc...in his way Mr. K will challenge the world'. (The Beatles).
Forty large laminated drawings produced whilst artist-in-residence at the Air and Space Studio London. exhibited at The Air Gallery Studio, London - 1984; Portsmouth City Museum and Art Gallery, UK - 1984; The Performance Space, Sydney - 1985.

'Willis is a Metaphysician in a Frenzy'

Under the title of 'The Carnival' Gary Willis has released some potent and relentless forces at the 'Performance Space' in Cleveland Street, Sydney, which is now gaining a deserved reputation for adventurous performance, theatre and exhibitions.

Willis, who has had some success in London following his residency at the Air Gallery, must think of his Carnival as a black comedy. There is certainly no revelry, festive feasting and merry making in these rigorous, unrelenting drawings in black and white, in which mankind is caught up in a whirlpool of spiralling life.

Profundity, mystery and surrealism accompany most. The drawings whirl as if the subjects were all riding Saint Catherine's Wheel. Although there are some exceptions, for example 'Hercules Haircut' (I think he means Samson, but let us not interfere with the artists liberties). A head twists up like a stricken waft of smoke from a pile of rubble, black and shattered rocks, to be captured between two columns and oppressed by the word 'TEMPLE'. The message seems clear enough for those that would bring the world apon themselves.

Other messages are not so obvious: 'The Illusionist' has half a horizontal body on one side , the other half on the other, the drawing being cut down the centre by the Magician's saw. A divided figure floats into a black hell, the hand on the saw is not that of a saviour. Beware of the Illusionist, Willis seems to be saying, and of painting and drawing whose aims are to create the illusions of those worlds we know only too well. Willis is a Metaphysician in a frenzy.

Added to this questioning is an ironical but serious interest in myths and magic. He seems to regard the practice of drawing itself as a magical process, one of casting spells as in the work of Alun Leach-Jones and John Martin.

It is difficult to say what is going on in the 'Fortune Teller's Examination' but in 'The Siren's Songs' a bound and unnamed figure (one imagines Ulysses and not Hercules) is kneeling under a ceiling of clouds, dotted with drifting oval eyes. Matters are even more dire in 'The Big Dipper', where mind, body and machine are tossed in a vertiginous whirlwind. By comparison, the crisp contours of Dale Frank's equally entrancing drawings begin look deceptively preordained.

Even when he uses stable forms it is only to contrast the world as a whirlpool. The 'Temple' has its columns, 'The Prisoner' a colonnade across the top, steady as a rock it only increases the speed and intensity of the spiral within the centre. In 'The Javelin Master's Assistant' a figure leaps across the centre of the drawing, where concentric circles delineate a target, more than a shield. Maybe Willis is suggesting a shield becomes the target, that protection is illusory. Willis' drawings indicate just how difficult it is to decipher the deceptions which gyrate about us with such bewildering intensity.

Does Willis have any forebears? As far as I know, only in the drawings of Umberto Boccioni, such as those in New York's Museum of Modern Art. John Elderfield in his notes to the recent history of the collection writes of the interpretation of space and time, dynamic distortion and baroque rhythms. Boccioni titles one of his works 'Muscular Dynamism' which could equally apply to Willis' work but Willis does not repeat and fuse images as in the Cubist traditions of the Italian Futurist master.

Boccioni sought spontaneity and simultaneity with very little time for thoughtful reflection: For Willis the page is a stage, and he prefers his theatre to have content. Enigmas abound and one thinks of the Pittura Metafisica and the work of the dramatist Pirandello and his actors in search of an author.

Artists must often feel like Pirandello's characters in search of a place to play. For example how could Willis' work fit into the art competitions which are dominated by set subjects?

- Elwynn Lynn 'The Australian' 1985.