Sorcha Dallas

Introducing their 1986 study The Triumph of Pierrot, Martin Green and John Swan comment that the commedia dell’arte ‘is not an idea or meaning, but a collection of images with many meanings’. The same could be said of Alex Pollard’s exhibition Black Marks. Which, as Pollard has stated, is not ‘about’ New Romanticism, clowns or cosmetics per de, but plays with the imagery of these subjects in an imaginative and fantastical manner rather than providing a literal representation or response. Pollard’s more oblique approach is wise, given that he has chosen to deal with references which are well worn both in art history and in contemporary art. Characters from the commedia dell’arte have exerted an enduring hold on artists, including Watteau, Goya, Picasso, Klee and Hockney, while New Romanticism, 1980s nostalgia and dandyism have become recurrent subjects for artists such as Mark Leckey, Enrico David and Lucy McKenzie. So it’s gratifying that Pollard’s inventive imaginings allude to this imagery in a sophisticated and resolved way. In uniting these central interests, Black Marks parallels and cites one of the artist’s key sources – David Bowie’s Pierrot in the 1980 pop video Ashes to Ashes. The presentation of Black Marks is exquisite and exacting. Nightscape (all works 2007), a reworking of a wall drawing in Torch Sculptures at Sorcha Dallas in 2006, covers two sides of the main gallery. An abstract composition which suggests a landscape, it is composed of contorted pencils (fabricated out of resin) and cosmetics; the makeup serves as a drawing medium, but the containers and the brand names are also used. Where Nightscape is allusive and delicate, the bronze Clown Medallions are more imposing and bombastic, dominating the central space on a large plinth. Romos Getting Ready is a series of collage-drawings in which the snapped pencils used to make the image blend with the marks they have made, completing the portraits.

As the titling testifies, every aspect of this exhibition has been considered in exceptional detail. Black Marks seems to refer to the Pierrot story in which Pierrot’s white suit becomes covered in the black marks of ordinary children’s hands (perhaps an allegory for the inevitable contamination of the avant-garde with kitsch). Equally specific, the ‘Romos’ are the kohled dandies of the shortlived British Romo movement – a mid-1990s derivative of 1980s New Romantics. With the implied musical soundtrack and the ritual of ‘putting on your face’, the works evoke subjects and styles as diverse as Arcimboldo, Hockney and quattrocento portraiture. In the upper gallery a series of oil paintings depicting abstracted figures of clowns are sinister and melancholic. Their bodies made up of distorted mirror reflections of the same brands and types of cosmetics used elsewhere, it’s clear that self-reference is integral to this exhibition and to Pollard’s broader practice. Maybe Pollard would love to be more spontaneous or less perfecting in his execution of works such as Nightscape and Romos Getting Ready but can’t quite bring himself to do it - there’s an unmistakable, impressive elegance here. For all its flamboyance, harlequinade and pierroting, Black Marks is a study in formalist rigour and thematic restraint.