For almost forty years, Joe Tilson has been making and exhibiting
constructions, reliefs, prints and multiples: works of great
individuality, evocativeness, richness of meaning, superb craftsmanship,
and - not least - dazzling visual impact in terms of colour, texture and
structure. Originally associated with the British Pop movement in the
early Sixties, he was soon led in a different direction by his deeply
held convictions and dissatisfaction with the values of modern urban
life. Today it is hard to think of another artist whose work is as
ambitious in its erudition, but at the same time as robust and
attractive in its physicality. "Art, " Tilson has written, "is a
symbolic discourse of which man alone is capable... I think of art as a
tool of understanding, an instrument of transformation to put yourself
in harmony with the world and (with) life... The basic given data of
experience and the physiological and psychological aspects of
procreation and birth are totally unchanged. What I'm dealing with is
trying to pick up these very basic facts and propose them again as Art."
The themes Tilson chooses for his work aspire to transcend time and cut
across cultures, to communicate the sacred in nature via references to
preclassical mythology, the North American Indians, the Dream Time of
the Australian Aboriginals, alchemy. Modular structuring devices - the
letters of the alphabet, the days of the week, the circular mnemonic
devices of Alchera which relate to the four cardinal points as well as
the four elements and the four seasons, the lunar month, labyrinths,
ladders, puzzles, games, words, symbols - are assembled in matrices,
layered with universal meaning. One of the generation ofBritish
artists - including Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj, Peter Blake. Allen Jones
and David Hockney - who studied at the Royal College of Art, Tilson
first had his works exhibited internationally at the 1964 Venice
Biennale and subsequently at a retrospective show at the Boyman's Mus
