Muttering Under My Breath

The push-pull nature of hot colour and cool metal is reflected through the individual and combined work by these two artists. It also reflects an investigation of mind/body split and fusion that the artists refuse to cede to science.

"The work that I have recently been engaged in involves the idea of contradictions and paradox," says Macklem. "The notion of contrasts, contradiction, competing meanings, blurred certainties, these are intriguing. Both a longing for spirit and meaning, and simultaneous scepticism towards dogmatic or closed certainties are some the energies which fuel my work."

I see clear influence of the Informalists working out of Paris in the 1950s and 60s in this body of work by Jones and Macklem. The biomorphic shapes, use of text and general wiggliness of Macklem's watercolours, her gestural line in Neuro Shimmy, the nod to automatism through Jones' Drawing Machine and their combined Swat piece, all resonate with Informalist conviction that the act of painting was a process of revelation, not a creation of an art object.

"The artistic act continues when the sculpture reaches the gallery," says Jones.

His invitation to engage with the work here allows the artists to push the viewer's envelope. Swat's use of colour, the benign shape of mittens and gawky mechanics pull the audience in - then the viewer gets hit with the alarming realisation that the mitts are lethal - metal mesh clubs that play rope-a-dope without discernment on a goofy cluster of orange balls.

Macklem's move into drawing with metallic tape on the wall, as seen here in Neuro Shimmy, marks a subtle change from her other two-dimensional work. Where did the colour go? It is transformed into movement in these new drawings, offering the same hot lively suffusion of warmth that the watercolours provide.

- Sue Donaldson

Muttering Under My Breath, Gallery shot, 2003-4

untitled, watercolour on paper, 2003-04