Tony Gill Review

A graduate of the Chelsea Art School, Tony Gill is a British artist with an alarming penchant for colour, and is a member of The Space, a Long Island collective of artists. His 2008 collection launched on 2nd October at the Idea Generation Gallery. Gill’s 2008 collection stirs a number of sensations; his dizzying eight-foot canvases disturb the viewer, and the overall effect is more than a little sleazy. The main impulse the collection evokes, however, is curiosity, as each piece is so confusedly rich in detail that the reflex is to analyse its many conflicting parts.

Graffiti, comic book crassness and a sense of the criminal are among the influences lurking in each canvas, which appear to have been filtered through several layers of influence, including 1980s New York, rap music and the Bash Street Kids strip.
The large canvases and smaller paintings showcase recurring motifs such as broken anatomical parts, phalluses, both blatant and veiled, Beano-tinged hyperbole, swollen visages, stubbled chins, bulging hot dogs and bongs. But not all of these features are evident at first glance – each picture is overlaid with further sketches, some merely colourful outlines, and it takes a step forward or back to identify them.

Hoots Man, Och-Aye (planks and gonks) takes its cue from Beano illustrations, with a grotesque, hairy-chinned Scotchman heading up the piece with his bulbous, ungainly features. Framed by a graffiti of chaos, including false teeth and some Y-fronts dangling over a pair of dubious looking feet, the piece is utterly bizarre and unsettling.
Are You in Line (upside down wolf) presents, as you might expect, an upside down wolf, borrowed from Wile E. Coyote, with hyperbolic cartoon eyes and an undulating snout.
Triple Xmas Saturday Super Soccer (santa) is another slightly incoherent bundle of colour and form, featuring a frying pan of unidentified matter harpooned at intervals by syringes, set to the backdrop of a monolithic day-glo Santa Claus.
RUOK (hot dog in from top, karate chop) displays the largest of Gill’s recurrent bulging hot dogs, two pink, comatose faces crowned by pharmaceutical paraphernalia and a single hand karate chopping a plank.
The Pearl Necklace (pipe, spoon) features demonic eyes, overblown Pythonesque body parts, a lighter flame held below a spoon, and pink clouds mushrooming gloomily in the background.

There’s an excited male consciousness throughout these works and also an unshakeable impression of things being somewhat out of kilter; class As and broken teeth float incongruously within a comic strip energy, whose comedy never seems to quite pierce the seasick unease of each scene. Idea Generation hosts Tony Gill’s 2008 collection until the 22nd of the month. Make sure you head up to the gallery to get a closer look at the top row.

Tony Gill, Idea Generation Gallery, 11 Chance Street, London.
Read our interview with the artist here