1987
Periphery and centre have a strange relationship in Gallery 14 at the Queensland Art Gallery.
Physically on the outer of the Gallery complex, Gallery 14 was set up as a purpose-built centre for contemporary and experimental art. But since 1982 Gallery 14's coherent use as a contemporary space has been marginal.
It has mostly taken overflows from non-contemporary exhibitions, or visiting blockbusters. For lengthy periods it has been closed. Only occasionally has it shown exciting contemporary work. That is a sad commentary on the putative engagement of the State's major art institution with the current work of younger artists.
One of the few recent arguably 'contemporary' self-contained exhibitions in Gallery 14, Peter Booth: Dark Vision, showed four paintings lent from one of Brisbane's best-endowed private collections of contemporary art.
The Booth show, small as it was, demonstrated some of the strengths and shortcomings of Gallery 14's present use as a contemporary space. Lighting and placement of works in the largely enclosed Gallery 14 provided both the intimacy and distance demanded by the introspective nature of Booth's anxiety-ridden works.
Top-lighting of the canvases, hanging above plinths set out about a metre from the walls, brought out a floating quality sympathetic to Booth's familiar dreamscapes which provoke a meditative mood through personally-expressive images, the vulnerable directness of which can evoke immediate emotional responses.
On opposite walls, the void of the vertical abstract acrylic Untitled 1973-74, from Booth's ‘black doorway' period, confronted the fragmented mirrors of the vibrantly aggressive acrylic Painting 1976.
On the intervening wall, the search for self renewed itself in the apocalyptic gestures of the figurative expressionist works Painting 1979 and Painting 1981, oils which show constant motivation