Darryl Rogers reviewed in Brisbane Show

Article written by Sophie Rose (first published on jugglers.org.au)

On entering numinous- i, one is invited into a space of sanctified quietness. A series of large, busy, Primitive-esque paintings by David Howard encircle a suspended black box, containing Darryl Roger’s hologram piece, Sehnsucht; and so, pagan visions surround the tabernacle. A sense of ritual undoubtedly informs both sets of work, yet is manifested quite differently in each. Howard gives a wild, uncontained spilling-forward of figures: as if spirits have seeped from the canvas into the gallery space. The shapes seem to balloon before one’s eyes: the image is full of gaseous intensity. Rogers provides a far more internal experience. One must enter his space; the art becomes a kind of confession-box and, as such, the surrounding area of the gallery begins to concave in on the box. The coupling of these two artists is something like the coming together of the voodoo and the sacramental, to create a meta-spiritualism.

Waterwalkers

by Patrick Sutczak

At the still point of the turning world, Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor toward; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement, And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point

There would be dance, and there is no dance.

T.S. Eliot, BN II: 16-21

It is important to read that beautiful piece from T.S. Eliot’s epic Four Quartets in order to appreciate the deeper emotional and ontological associations with Darryl Rogers' Waterwalkers currently exhibiting at Sawtooth ARI in Launceston.

A brief but carefully worded blurb attached to the corridor on the way into the exhibition gives us a clue that Roger’s work is rich with complex ideas featuring time, no-time, quantum theory and matter fused with Eliot’s exquisite poetry.