JON WEALLEANS Post-Pop Epiphanies9 April – 15 May 2014 Francis Kyle Gallery

2

(cover)JON WEALLEANS ©1 Resonator guitar 201350 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

‘Jon Wealleans, fine and honest artist that he is, paints because he knows how intrinsic to his

own creative process is the concept of ordered chaos: a seemingly random agglomeration of

objects, that yet contain within their interrelation the lineaments of the mind that assembled

them. In this sense, Jon’s paintings are in fact evocations of shamanic ‘symbol sets’: ritual

objects that are arranged then rearranged in order to provoke remote effects.’

Will Self

3

JON WEALLEANS Post-Pop Epiphanies9 April – 15 May 2014 Francis Kyle Gallery

Connoisseur of the curious, the arcane and sometimes the outright preposterous, Jon Wealleans has been mining two complementary seams for Post-Pop Epiphanies, his third one-person exhibition with Francis Kyle Gallery. For the new still lifes and interiors he has taken his inspiration, first, from the numerous and diverse collections of objects (agglomerations, as he prefers to call them) – a mingling of cherished finds with ephemera ranging from tin toys to rare Art Deco pieces, Jugendstil vases and pop artefacts to Victorian and contemporary tourist paraphernalia – which have caught his fancy over the years and now preside like an occupying army over most of his living space. In tandem, he has turned his subversive compositional sense to the plants and flowers which everywhere border and embrace this space.

In a vision unmistakeable in its brilliance of palette and unremitting intensity of focus, we are invited with Wealleans’ Post-Pop Epiphanies to share the world of a distinguished, idiosyncratic architect turned painter of still lifes and interiors. With such a career trajectory, it is only fitting, indeed, that two Italian designers stand out for him as his chief influences: Alessandro Mendini, creator of mobile infinito, philosophic furniture, and most specially Ettore Sottsass, progenitor of the Memphis movement and super-sensual apostle of creative kitsch favouring artificial materials such as plastic laminates.

Jon Wealleans has often painted flowers so startling they suck the viewer through new doors of heightened perception into another dimension. Flowers return now in abundance but with another agenda. These include a sequence of smaller works which started life as fast watercolours, recording the fall of cast shadows. They were then reworked as oils cropped to a square format, suggesting, as Wealleans comments, a pastiche of the seed packets available at any garden centre, which feature images of impossibly exotic blooms such as Himalayan poppies.

Wealleans’ flowers portray a world of orchid languor glowing in lurid colours, outdoors and exposed to sunlight quite contrary to the traditional flower composition and seeming to constitute, as Proust wrote of the roses painted by his imaginary Elstir, ‘a new variety with which this painter, like some clever horticulturalist, has enriched the Rose family’. The particular strangeness of those faultless floral compositions by the Dutch masters, in which the paintings took shape over successive months with new flowers added as they came into seasonal bloom, is now replaced by Wealleans with another kind of strangeness, one arising from the absence of the usual, single light source, its place taken by an even, diffused halogen lighting mirroring the ubiquitous flood of light of the contemporary interior.

4

2 Clematis 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

3 Colchicum (water lily) 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

5

4 BBC Radio 6 Music 201450 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

6

5 Bathroom shelf 201350 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

7

6 Purple polyanthus 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

7 Irises 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

8

8 Dahlia 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

9

9 French country circus 201280 x 80cm 31.5 x 31.5in

10

10 Colour chaos theory 201480 x 80cm 31.5 x 31.5in

11 Reading room chaos 201380 x 60cm 31.5 x 23.5in

12

12 Pansies VII 201330 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

13

13 Auto-focus overload 201450 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

14

15

14 Bathroom mirror 201350 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

16

15 Hyacinths and Iris 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

16 Clematis Trellis V 201330 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

17

17 Wild flowers and scent 201250 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

18

18 Motion, stream of consciousness 201250 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

19

19 Tulips IV 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

20

20 Roses VI 201330 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

21 Tulips III 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

21

22 Portrait of the artist 201250 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

22

23 3-D spectacle 201450 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

23

24 Tulips and poppies 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

25 Tulips II 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

24

25

Jon Wealleans (born Yorkshire 1946) studied architecture at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art followed by post-graduate studies in Design at the Royal College of Art, where he is now an Honorary Fellow. Attracted from the start in his architectural studies by the arts of perspective and the study of shadows as taught in sciagraphy, Wealleans relished the computer-free environment of the time with its encouragement to wander between different departments and disciplines.

Wealleans’ career in architecture began with his work with the Building Design Partnership, then Foster Associates before he went on to develop his own practice. In the 1960s he designed shops for the now legendary Mr Freedom and other pop-linked environments as well as furniture which gave him a high public profile and appearances on two BBC TV programmes, Design by Five. Concurrently, Wealleans taught architecture and design at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, the Royal College of Art and Kingston University. At around this time he collaborated also with rock musicians and their management, including the Elton John Organisation and Led Zeppelin. Having always painted, though self-taught, Wealleans has devoted increasing time to his painting since the 1990s, and has participated in several of the Gallery’s theme exhibitions including Roma (2000), Lair of the Leopard (2005), : Contemporary painters from the West winter in Russia (2008), This twittering world: Contemporary painters celebrate TS Eliot’s four QuartetS (2011) and Jumping for Joyce: Contemporary painters revel in the world of James Joyce (2013). One-person exhibitions with Francis Kyle Gallery 2009, 2011 and 2014.

JON WEALLEANS

26

1 Resonator guitar 2013 50 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

2 Clematis 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

3 Colchicum (water lily) 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

4 BBC Radio 6 Music 2014 50 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

5 Bathroom shelf 2013 50 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

6 Purple polyanthus 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

7 Irises 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

8 Dahlia 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

9 French country circus 2012 80 x 80cm 31.5 x 31.5in

10 Colour chaos theory 2014 80 x 80cm 31.5 x 31.5in

11 Reading room chaos 2013 80 x 60cm 31.5 x 23.5in

12 Pansies VII 2013 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

13 Auto-focus overload 2014 50 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

14 Bathroom mirror 2013 50 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

15 Hyacinths and Iris 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

16 Clematis Trellis V 2013 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

17 Wild flowers and scent 2012 50 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

18 Motion, stream of consciousness 2012 50 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

19 Tulips IV 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

20 Roses VI 2013 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

21 Tulips III 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

22 Portrait of the artist 2012 50 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

23 3-D spectacle 2014 50 x 50cm 19.75 x 19.75in

24 Tulips and poppies 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

25 Tulips II 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

26 Poppies 2012 30 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in

All works oil on canvas

27

‘My paintings have all been made from existing, accidental and non-contrived arrangements

of objects, furniture and artefacts – they are never ‘set-up’ or constructed as a deliberate still life

scene… The complexity of a still life with seemingly random patches of colour can sometimes

devolve into an abstract pattern – perhaps aspiring to the textile design type of imagery that can

be seen in the background of some Gustav Klimt paintings. My original training in modernist

architectural tradition has always been the source of a dilemma, in that I was drawn away

from the Bauhaus methodology towards the more anti-rationalist architects and designers like

Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and later I latched onto the super-sensuous

designers of the sixties. The ensuing problem I encountered, which may be reflected in my

paintings, is the development of the nagging question: do the Modernists, originally championed

by Adolf Loos, continue to dismiss and banish applied decoration because they didn’t like it or

because they couldn’t do it?’

Jon WealleanS

FRANCIS KYLE GALLERY9 MADDOX STREET LONDON W1S 2QET +44 (0)20 7499 6870/6970 F +44 (0)20 7495 0180OPEN WEEKDAYS 10AM – 6PM SATURDAYS 11PM – 5PMwww.franciskylegallery.com franciskylegallery@gmail.com

CATALOGUE DESIGN BY DAVID DRIVER

26 Poppies 201230 x 30cm 11.75 x 11.75in