reviews peter mcdonald
High Sun, 2007 (detail),
acrylic gouache on jesmonite,
200 x 105 x 60 cm.
courtesy kate macgarry, london
peter mcdonald
kate macgarry, london
7 september – 14 october
Peter McDonald’s exhibition at Kate MacGarry ended during the London There is then a theme of disjointed happiness at play throughout
art fair frenzy. It seemed appropriate. McDonald’s painterly protagonists McDonald’s work, and it is this sensibility that enables him to take the short
with their oversize see-through heads and drifting intent seem a gentle, step from the humorous observation of everyday performance into the
prescient footnote to the sensory and verbal exhaustion induced by those realm of pathos and satire. In Radio Phone-In (2007) we witness a scene in
few days in October. split screen: a radio DJ speaking on the phone to a listener who has called
McDonald’s paintings start by attempting to describe everyday, in for an undefined purpose. The descriptive presence of the listener’s
self-conscious performative acts and end after a stylistic journey through living room and the DJ’s booth is cleverly understated, and we are left with
figuration, abstraction and cartoon animation. If Philip Guston, Miró and an illustration of a private scene that comes to life in a public sphere. It’s a
Gary Hume all collaborated on teaching a painting workshop to a team scene, however, that’s destined to fail – the feedback from the radio on the
of abandoned characters from a 1970s French comic, the results would listener’s table would result in a howl that would stop any conversation in its
look similar to McDonald’s doughy, amorphous asexual forays. This unique tracks. This is a seriously funny painting.
aesthetic is particularly satisfying when one of McDonald’s characters In High Sun, Heavy Moon and Crying Mountain (al 2007),
encounters an art object (either as viewer or maker), and in Artist in Studio McDonald’s characters leave the canvas and puncture the gallery walls and
(2006) he avoids the trap of overt self-reflection through the amusement floor as jesmonite sculptures. They hover like demigods over McDonald’s
of the scene’s droll execution and the application of a colourist’s palette. increasingly sophisticated attempts to describe the world around him.
On further examination the new works on display have an overall At odds with the ephemeral nature of his weightless painted characters,
sense of displacement, offering fleeting explorations of self-conscious these figures offer a (literally) new dimension to the exhibition. Just as the
acts within differing nonplaces. Airports interact with bland shopping paintings envision a world whose motives are transparently legible, the
trips, and as viewers, we’re invited to peer anonymously through the slight sculptures seem to want to bring that mutability into our hard and opaque
introspection of the artist’s eyes into worlds of beautiful awkwardness. The reality. Alasdair Hopwood
looming light, transparent heads of McDonald’s central figures have a
happily inane quality to them, and yet, paradoxically, you can imagine that
their joy is often countered by bouts of severe vomiting and the odd faint.
They feel slightly queasy, punch-drunk and likeably dumb – even the gun-
wielding copper in Airport Security (2006) looks like he would happily let off
a few rounds just to impress the waving child in the background.
artreview 128
December_REVIEWS.indd 128 2/11/07 12:15:19
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