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Paintings with a twist - Alan Salisbury at Kooywood Gallery, Cardiff
by The Western Mail
Jun 17 2011

The 17th century meets Pop Art in Alan Salisbury’s new body of work – and there are some surprising results

ALAN Salisbury may have been exhibiting his work during each of the last five decades, but he remains one of the most original and distinctive artists in Wales today.

From 1969, when Liverpool’s prestigious Walker Art Gallery granted him his first solo exhibition, enthusiasm for Salisbury’s approach to his art has endured and developed strongly throughout the UK and increasingly into mainland Europe and the United States.

Winner of numerous awards during his career – ranging from prizewinner in the New Look in British Portraiture awards at the National Portrait Gallery almost 30 years ago to the Liverpool School of Art first prize just six years ago – his work is held in numerous public and private collections.

It is therefore clear why a new solo exhibition by Salisbury attracts major interest among collectors.

His last solo exhibition in Wales was four years ago, the acclaimed Transcription and Appropriation exhibition at Oriel Y Bont Gallery at the University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd.

Today, his latest collection will go on show at Cardiff’s Kooywood Gallery.

The exhibition, Altered Images II, sees Salisbury at his imaginative and technical best. A painter who works within the conventions of narrative representation, his work is often filled with witty and playful references to art of the past, and this new exhibition doesn’t disappoint.

The subtext of sensuality and eroticism withheld beneath the surface in the puritanical era of 17th century Northern Europe is playfully brought forward by Salisbury in many of the 20-plus new paintings on display.

However, it is the 17th century, with a twist, to which his attention is mainly focussed in Altered Images II.

The twist is his increasing use of the brash iconography of Pop Art which has been infiltrating the quiet restraint of his work in recent years.

Therefore, this new body of work sees Salisbury’s characters often indulge in a humorous critical discourse with the artist and the work in which they are depicted.

His series of still life work, for example, reference the masters such as Beert, Battista and the De Stijl movement, but become much more than just a depiction of everyday objects as a range of allegories emerge.

While born in Preston, Lancashire, and a student of Manchester and Liverpool Colleges of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, Salisbury has lived in Wales since 1974, working at the University of Glamorgan where he was principal lecturer in painting and field leader in arts and media.

He has now left to concentrate on his own artistic practice, although he maintains contact with the university as an external fellow.

Within the new exhibition, Salisbury has explored the idea that motifs from the past might unexpectedly just ‘pop up’ on to the surface like an unsolicited image suddenly appearing on our computer screens.

This is in keeping with his recent work, which exploits the symbolism attached to the depiction of objects in early still life painting.

Again extensive use is made of works from the past to generate ideas.

He says: “I have become very interested in the meaning that can be given to simple inanimate objects.

“This has led me to look at Dutch still life and floral painters like Pieter Claesz and Ambrosius Bosscheart and playfully subvert some of the moral messages that they present.”

In other paintings, his passion for portrait work, as evidenced by numerous prizes for the genre, emerged.

Frequently the starting point is again an historical source that can be transcribed to incorporate something about the sitter.

“Portraiture interests me, but not so much as a mere recording of an individual’s appearance. I want to give the painting several layers of meaning, perhaps incorporating something about the sitter’s past history, their relationships, interests and obsessions,” he adds

Rhian Kooy, director of the Kooywood Gallery, is delighted to have secured an exhibition by Salisbury.

She says: “Alan Salisbury is an artist of the highest order; his work is categorised by its intelligence, reference to history and humour but underpinned by tremendous artistic skill and integrity.

“The breadth of his success, from awards and solo exhibitions from 1969 and through every decade since, demonstrates that Alan is one of the great talents to have emerged in Wales in the late 20th and early 21st century.

“I hope this new body of work is recognised as something of real importance in the Welsh artistic calendar.”

Alan Salisbury: Altered Images II is at Kooywood Gallery, Cardiff until July 9




The National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth has acquired two paintings from one of the most gifted and original painters that Wales has ever produced.
The two portraits by Swansea’s Alfred Janes, recently shown at Cardiff’s Kooywood Gallery as part of a widely acclaimed Centenary exhibition of the artist's work, will be added to the national collection.
The first painting is a portrait of Mervyn Levy, pictured left, part of Swansea’s clique of creatives known as the Kardomah Boys based in a Castle Street cafe, painted by Janes in 1931.
While the second – called Self Portrait: Puzzled – was completed 22 years later.
Born to parents who ran a fruit and flower shop, Janes won his scholarship to the Royal Academy in 1931 after a time at Swansea Grammar School and Swansea College of Art.
In London, he shared a succession of Chelsea flats with the likes of William Scott, who was to become one of the country’s greatest still life artists, and the poet Dylan Thomas.
In 1934 he painted his first portrait of Thomas, which is in the collection of National Museum Wales and is regarded as one of the finest paintings ever of the writer.
Janes returned to Swansea in 1936, but when war broke out he joined the Army and was posted to Egypt, where he learned Swahili and Italian, returning to teaching and painting in peacetime. A year later, in 1946, he completed the painting of the memorable portrait of Maesteg poet and painter Vernon Watkins, which now hangs in Swansea’s Glynn Vivian Gallery.
During the 1950s and early ’60s Janes and his family lived in Nicholston Hall, a rambling manor house in Gower, finally leaving Wales in 1963 to take up a post at the School of Art in Croydon, where he lived for the rest of his life.
A very limited number of Janes paintings are currently available at Kooywood Gallery. Please call or visit the artist's oage at www.kooywoodgallery.com