Nudes and all that jazz
Art with David Dolan

The Advertiser, 23rd May 1976

Australia must be the only nation in the world with an internationally famous jazz composer who can paint - really paint at a professional standard, and not merely daub away and be noticed because of being a celebrity.

Dave Dallwitz, who so recently delighted us with the "Ern Malley Suite" live at the Gallery and then on TV, is showing a confident collection of nudes and landscapes at the Avenel Bee Gallery, Stirling.

And as if to underline the versatility of the artist, the Ern Malley LP is on sale alongside the paintings and drawings.

Dallwitz always says his music has no bearing on his painting, but there are some irresistible parallels.

His jazz is in a pure 1920's style, and in his picture-making, too, he works within a convention more than half a century old.

But in both fields his work has an extraordinary freshness born of energy and enthusiasm.

The paintings are mainly in an academic post-impressionistic manner, as they depend on flat, contrasting areas of color to evoke forms. Much of their interest derives from the tension between this flatness and the illusion of solid volumes it creates. Dallwitz seems to like blues and greens against more hotly colored backgrounds.

The least successful paintings are those where faces and heads are reduced to rather too angular and chunky blocks.

The nudes are all masterly. The slightly stylized landscapes have a lovely feeling of rhythm - almost syncopated, dare I say? I mean it literally, for syncopation is the placing of an accent where it would not normally fall, and that can surely apply to an accent of color.

Ian Chandler, at Parkside's CAS Gallery, is also interested in the use of flat areas of color to define forms and spaces.

Because he uses blocks of wood illuminated from several points, his paintings come our in a hard-edge style. Or is it the other way around, with the preference for style dictation subject-matter?

In Chandler's small drawings the blocks remain the subject, but I most of the paintings they are merely used and lost in the patterns of light, color and surfaces. A few of the paintings, like the drawings, take not of the texture of wood, and these have the most instant appeal.

The big color structures done with stunning precision and control are not all equally effective. Some seem to fall apart into three or four smaller pictures, as blank areas divide busy regions. Whether or not this is seen as a fault depends on how much uniformity or unity is expected: but it does cause a feeling of unease.

These pictures represent a phase in Chandler's development which has already concluded. He has now started to work in a softer manner. They are, however, directly related to his "outer-space" paintings of the sixties. In them, he was interested in the exploration of the cosmos by men in machines; here he explores specific spaces with the painter's tools of light and color.

At the Lombard Street Gallery in North Adelaide is an exhibition of small landscapes by Tony Rieger, which reinforces his reputation as one of our better amateur painters.

He would not delude himself that he is in the same league as Dallwitz and Chandler, so no comparisons need be make. Rieger paints because he enjoys it, and when not too much under the influence of the Dridan style, he produces pleasant, enjoyable pictures.

In the Crafts Authority's gallery at the Jam Factory is a show by four young local craftsmen.