From Andrew Frost…
There are two kinds of bad painting. There’s bad bad painting and good bad painting. Where the former is noted for the painter making all the wrong choices while searching for the right ones, the latter is identified by deceptively sophisticated composition, eccentric colour and bold figuration. Amber Boardman is most certainly a bad painter of the good kind, an artist who has thrown out the bourgeois rule book of making pictures the ‘right way’ and embraced the counter tradition of wild and wooly picture making for her show Permission at Chalk Horse.
Like the old copyright notice used to say, no permission is given or implied by art history – precedence only counts for so much – and so every new generation of painters must stake a claim for the credibility of their vision. Boardman [if that is in fact her real name] revels in a humorous play of male and female archetypes with not-so-camouflaged sexual content, looking like the bastard offspring of Brett Whiteley‘s nudes and Philip Guston‘s hairy men in a variety of poses, portraits, interactions and situations. Parental Guidence advised.
Until April 25
Chalk Horse, Darlinghurst
Pic: Amber Boardman, Kate, 2013. Acrylic on paper, 32×46 cm.
