John Nixon
Groups + Pairs 2016 – 2020

John Nixon’s works are most­ly made in groups or series, even though they are indi­vid­ual, solo paint­ings. Sin­gu­lar objects, they are made in accor­dance with spe­cif­ic para­me­ters which define one group from anoth­er. For exam­ple, in this exhi­bi­tion, a group of con­struct­ed paint­ings has a con­cep­tu­al basis around the use of var­i­ous lengths of tim­ber that are intu­itive­ly organ­ised across the sur­face of the MDF in dif­fer­ent geo­met­ric per­mu­ta­tions. Sim­i­lar­ly, a group of white paint­ings on can­vas and hes­s­ian pan­els are joined togeth­er to form vari­a­tions on shape and structure.

The exhi­bi­tion also fea­tures paired paint­ings, some­times made in groups as pre­vi­ous­ly but in this for­mat dis­played side-by-side. The first paired paint­ings were made in 2016 and this process is con­tin­u­ous. Many dif­fer­ent rules of engage­ment are applied in the mak­ing and visu­al attrib­ut­es of each pair. Some are sim­ple, some, com­plex. Both min­i­mal and max­i­mal con­cerns with­in Nixon’s prac­tice cre­ate an inter­nal dia­logue and are dis­played here in evi­dence of his ongo­ing ded­i­ca­tion to geo­met­ric abstraction.

There are three addi­tion­al com­po­nents in Groups + Pairs 2016 – 2020. First­ly, pre­sent­ed on tables, are sets of col­lab­o­ra­tive works made by Nixon and Jacque­line Sto­janovic, that com­bine Stojanovic’s prac­tice of weav­ing with Nixon’s con­struct­ed paintings.

The sec­ond com­po­nent is a video titled Red + Blue (2020). The video fea­tures the dancer Grace Uchi­da wear­ing dress­es from Alpha60 in con­junc­tion with two of Nixon’s paint­ings. This video demon­strates Nixon’s inter­est in the crossover between con­tem­po­rary dance and paint­ing using alter­nate meth­ods of pre­sen­ta­tion. Red + Blue is dis­played in the win­dow of Alpha60’s Flinders Lane store.

Final­ly, Anna Schwartz Gallery invit­ed the artist to pro­duce a lim­it­ed run of posters for the exhi­bi­tion. The posters are dis­trib­uted around the inner sub­urbs of Mel­bourne and fea­ture Nixon’s sig­na­ture graph­ic design style.

John Nixon, 2020