Pleasure-go-round: Simon Gaiger and Bernard Irwin | Floor 2

CIRCLE IS DELIGHTED TO PRESENT A TWO-PERSON EXHIBITION BY SIMON GAIGER AND BERNARD IRWIN, BRINGING TOGETHER PAINTING AND SCULPTURE IN A VIBRANT EXPLORATION OF COLOUR, FORM, AND SENSATION. ACROSS THEIR DISTINCT PRACTICES, BOTH ARTISTS EMBRACE ABSTRACTION AS A SPACE FOR RHYTHM, ATMOSPHERE, AND VISUAL PLEASURE.

Openly decorative and anxiety-free, these paintings and coloured sculptures recall the guiltless museum art of 1960s America and the post-Matissean paintings of Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, whose shapes acted as a prop for colour. Noland said in 1969, “I want to have colour be the origin of painting.” Like Noland, Irwin and Gaiger tease us with gorgeous colour — formal hedonism.

It is worth noting that Simon and Bernard are of the same generation, and both men were born under colourful suns — Malaya, Africa, and the Pacific. Time and place must have seeped deep into their psyches. Simon now lives in West Wales and Bernard in Cornwall, yet their childhood environments still impact their art.

The two men complement each other, but Simon’s sculptures, although abstract, have a physical presence and are imbued with the narrative of the maker — here colour unifies form. Irwin’s paintings, on the other hand, are impersonal; bubblegum loops or pods act as containers for his astute colour sense and knowledge of simultaneous contrast.