The themes portrayed in Geoff La Gerche’s paintings are often derived from the artist’s reflections on historical events, acclaimed art works of the past, and his ruminations on the wonder and beauty of nature. Presented in this exhibition are major works in oil as well as smaller works in watercolour, each revealing the artist’s skill in composition and his cultivated understanding of the subtleties of colour harmonisation.

Foremost a draftsman, La Gerche’s preliminary sketches of major works demonstrates his characteristically strong line-work and faithfulness to the overall compositional structure. It is through these series of drawings and watercolours that La Gerche resolves myriad design problems prior to rendering his subjects in a finished painting. The brushwork in his finished works appear fresh and not overly laboured due to this formative groundwork.

Present in all of La Gerche’s paintings is a marked synergy and dynamic tension between fragmentation or units of colour and their relationship to the pictorial whole. This is certainly the case in Adam and Eve at Giverny, a watercolour in which La Gerche combines one of the most popularised motifs of art history, Claude Monet’s water lilies, with one of the more universalised images of the bible, that of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace.¹ The result is highly decorative, elaborate and ornate. This conscious homage to French Impressionist Monet and his depictions of his home in Giverny is complete with the famed lily pond and Japanese bridge. It overtly acknowledges the profound influence on La Gerche of this celebrated painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It also reveals a very human desire to convey the omnipresent search for truth and an understanding of the natural world that has gripped not only artists but also the first man and woman as described in the Bible – Adam and Eve.

Beginning with the light-drenched design work from the left side of the picture, our eye moves into the lush saturated greens of the secluded garden setting. The conglomerate of unique parts or compartmentalised blocks of design, merge in a celebration of springtime and the humbling and tranquil qualities of a well-tendered garden. Despite being an outdoor setting, La Gerche has treated the image as an interior with limited depth and an overall flatness.

Adam and Eve in Giverny is a work of unashamed harmony and pleasure – La Gerche revels in its highly stylised design and forms. A self-proclaimed atheist, it is the symbolic narrative of the story of Adam and Eve that has captured La Gerche’s attention as it remains a story pertinent to the human condition – the search for enlightenment and the seductive manifestations of pleasure. Re-contextualising the plight of Adam and Eve is not for the faint-hearted, yet it is common in La Gerche’s practice to blend biblical references with the unexpected – the uncanny.

Some of La Gerche’s paintings invite us to reflect not only on our own humanity and the beauty of nature but also the perils of progress, and the darkness that can afflict humankind within historical epochs. Unnervingly, La Gerche wrestles with such topics with seeming ease. That which disturbs us is simplified, geometricised as evident in Tower of Babel, one of 32 panels from The Garden of Evil frieze. We are placed in a position where we can absorb a human tragedy, in a contained fashion – piece by piece. Despite the vastness of the artwork (comparable to a David Hockney landscape) and its unimaginable horror, we are able to digest and reflect in a civilised manner upon the inhumanity of 11 September, 2001. In this powerful work, biblical narratives and modern events of destruction collide. We are invited to reflect on the symbolic destruction of the Twin Towers through a representation of the Tower of Babel being targeted by a plane. To draw an analogy between these towers makes sense when considering that these constructions all celebrated the power and glory of humankind. The plane that is pictured hitting the Tower of Babel does not seem out of place perhaps as it is more like a World War II bomber than the jets that hit the World Trade Centre. The billowing clouds of smoke arising from the point of impact represent the 9/11 atrocities but also symbolise the destructive potential of human life. The tower is suggestive of Brueghel’s image of the same name (c.1563). It also evokes Vladimir Tatlin’s Constructivist tower of 1919. As pointed out by Geoffrey Edwards, many artists are honoured through various details including Johannes Vermeer, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico and M.C. Escher.² The Garden of Eden chronicles La Gerche’s efforts to understand a world that is gripped both by beauty and terror; it represents a tour de force in La Gerche’s oeuvre.

From saturated beauty to horror, we are next greeted by dry humour, parody and wit in Searching for Eden, whereby the comic character Tin Tin is adrift in Katherine Gorge in a boat with his dog Snowy.  That a cartoon character might search for perfection at Katherine Gorge is an absurdity to say the least, though it is, as we know – a beautiful place. This small watercolour, however, is more an exercise of merging two vastly different areas of imagination and influence in La Gerche’s practice. Connecting comical caricatures and an awe-inspiring ravine of Australia, with blocks of luminous colour reminiscent of Paul Klee and Robert Delaunay, confounds the viewer. Popular culture references can be found in many of La Gerche’s work – the traditional dichotomy of high and low culture is fused with an overwhelming sense of “why not?”

The baffling creative methodology of La Gerche is evidence of a remarkable imagination that is at once fluid and instinctual, but also cerebral and astute. This exhibition reveals the artist’s intense curiosity for iconic artists of the past and a fondness for recontextualising history, culture and biblical events. It presents a rich patterning of colour and thought within a tapestry of design elements that evokes, heartens, disturbs and soothes our senses.

Claire Watson
Curator
March 2009

Published by: Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale

Exhibition Dates: 14 March – 10 May 2009