A painting does not need to be a pretty picture to be considered a good work of art. What it does have to do is reveal the artist's command of skills and have something to communicate. Not all the paintings in this exhibition are pretty, but each one is a damn good work of art as Jackson takes the viewer on a journey through well rendered visual commentaries on the modern world, in all its gory.
Jackson's large canvases seem to have been worked on from all sides with dripping, layering and slathering of pigment. This gives the surface an intriguing sense of visual turmoil. But when you focus on aspects of the image, you discover each composition is a collection of polychromatic, polyphonic conversations on current events that ignite the mind as much as engage the eye. Consider Toxic Culture, the major triptych that gives the show it's name and provides a vibrant pictorial dialogue on the modern condition. It reveals how sex has become lethal and religion a joke, how blind, deaf and silent monkeys ignore a child shooting a gun and a triumvirate of nations attending a tea party (if England & the US are the Mad Hatter & the March Hare, then the sleepy Dormouse must be Australia). There is much more happening along the trip from one end of this exhibit to the other and each comment is well drawn and painted.
All the paintings employ a surface excitement of strong colour and clear drawing that invite the viewer into the conversation. Jackson's complex imagery evokes social/political statements however the artist leaves room for viewers to insert their own comments and extend the commentary along their own lines of interpretation. As a result we find ourselves involved on two levels, visual and intellectual, and continuing the dialogue long after leaving the galley. For example is Sugar and Spice ... and everything nice, we are told are what little girls are made of, right? Here, amid the splash of colour and words of the rhyme, floats a haunting grey portrait of a frightened young girl. Perhaps she fears the other words printed on the canvas, the ones that read 'For Sale'.
If our bodies are not for sale by others, we happily sell our own soul for a moment of fame or all the white goods you can cram into a motor home. But Wait, That's Not all...(Fame) is an excellent example of television's promotion of fleeting popularity and lasting avarice and how it mutates the audience into a mob of sheep. Then in Jackson's Primary Series, a collection of monochrome images, instructs us on how values are shaped by childhood lessons and influences. In these images, innocent symbols placed alongside suggestions of vice are neatly arranged in well balanced compositions that have us re-evaluating our own early life experiences.
As much as I appreciate the visual satisfaction and intellectual workout the larger exhibits provide, my personal favourites are the small A5 size boxes, each a treasure to hold and view. Here I found fleeting moments and lasting memories, half formed ideas and completed projects, hints and statements, windows on the mind and doors to the imagination. Every one is a good work of art that will communicate something unique to each person holding it.
Open your eyes and mind to Jackson's art, you'll find the experience thought provoking and that's really what good art is all about.