Send in the clowns AND ACROBATS
Robert Creighton’s new series of prints explores movement
“There are views, ideas expressed in the pieces that act as a kind of metaphor for our lives and society.”
Sometimes an artist needs time for an idea to grow.
A few years ago, Robert Creighton began a series of circus images. Then he abandoned them.
“The idea continued to spin through my brain and would surface from time to time,” he tells me. “About a year ago I started a series of small prints based on the figure in off-balance, uncommon positions.”
This led him to acrobats, aerialists and clowns and culminated in Carnival, a high-flying exhibition of prints at Gallery on the Bay.
The well-established Hamilton printmaker, 69, often works in a series, always tackling new narratives that include landscape and the human figure. In this show, he offers groups of human figures in movement and single figures, mostly as portrait types.
In “Balancing Act,” four acrobats take centre stage, flanked by a harlequin patas tern. Creighton creates a balanced and complex, relationship among the figures.
One acrobat, dressed in a red, yellow and black harlequin costume, lies on his back, legs in the air. The other three somehow form a sphere balanced on the soles of the recumbent figure’s feet.
This makes for a potentially awkward, top-heavy composition. But Creighton performs his own balancing act. He makes the single figure look space-taking and the others more compact.
Because the acrobat on the ground takes up space horizontally and vertically, he provides a reliable foundation. The three figures above, by contrast, are together so compact that two of them are visible only as the tops of heads and some hands.
Is there more to this image of a man supporting what appears to be a woman and two children?
“There are views, ideas expressed in the pieces that act as a kind of metaphor for our lives and society,” Creighton says.
Complex movements invigorate “The Daring Young Man.” Three acrobats perform against a backdrop of curtains that add visual value. One flies through the air, the top half of his body caught within a triangle of darkness. He’s just about to touch the trapeze on the left. A pair of curtains frame him and curve away from him.
Two acrobats perform below. The bald one sits on the ground and holds on to a long-haired one who arches away from him, stretching his body into a curve that mirrors that of the acrobat in the air. These curves also echo those of the curtains.
Creighton used clay torsos for threedimensional sketches, to get the poses just right.
“I had these clay torsos that I’d created a while ago as visual and physical notations about movement,” he explains. “They were originally based on a dancer but seemed to be appropriate and viable the same movements as acrobats.”
“Portrait of a Clown (Nic),” is one of several portrait type images. Nic is captured in an almost formal frontal, headto-chest pose. A smile on his face, a red nose and sailor costume belie the formality of the pose.
“Nic was a young man who created a clown persona that he used and was fairly well known in the Fringe festival and related activities,” Creighton says.
“He died quite young of cancer. I’ve had a drawing of him that I’d done years ago and thought that a print based on that drawing would be a nice way of creating a remembrance of him.”
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator, YouTube video maker and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art. dhaggo@the spec.com