Correction: Due to a production error, only part of the review of Lynne Foster Fitzgerald's exhibition, Bardo, appeared on yesterday's arts page. The complete version appears below.
Lynne Foster Fitzgerald has intriguingly titled her exhibition at the Garter Lane Arts Centre, Bardo, which reads as a cross between Bardot and Garbo but means, she informs us, something else entirely. It has nothing to do with reclusive glamour and is in fact a Tibetan term signifying, "a transition or gap between the completion of one situation and the onset of another".
The Bardo paintings make up one of four series in the overall show, but their spirit seems to pervade all the work. By situating herself, and by extension us, the viewers, in this indeterminate space, Foster Fitzgerald arguably avoids being pinned down in terms of imagery or intentions and, more, can explore the idea of a fruitful uncertainty.
Her paintings continually replay notions of internalisation and quest. In an ambiguous, understated way, she proposes a number of symbolically charged images, including a horned head, a tunnel or passageway and an opening, a heart, a book, text, flesh. There may be hints of mythic archetypes here, particularly the account of the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, but Foster Fitzgerald is tapping into the associations rather than providing a thematic treatment.
The enduring appeal of such mythic frameworks is by no means confined to the traditional fine arts. It underlines even computer games such as Tomb Raider. Foster Fitzgerald's interest is centred on the process of painting as a means of personal exploration, a way of addressing and articulating areas of experience and emotion that might otherwise elude expression (in a way that suggests an affinity with the work of Anita Groener). So the external world is largely internalised. In fact, the world in her work is usually a dark-lit, subterranean realm. Space, light and colour are not so much pictorial components in a conventional sense. They amount to the emotionally charged essence of the work.
Whether coincidentally or not, she is apparently more relaxed in some of the Bardo paintings, including Bardo 3, dominated by red and dark earths, and the blue choppy rhythms of Bardo 5, which are particularly good. Bardo 2 strikingly equates the skin of the painting with torn human skin. When she runs into problems, as she occasionally does, they may well relate to the difficulty of painting with gestural freedom while preserving a set motif.
Many painters say that you have to be prepared to throw it all away at every stage of the painting: if you start trying to save nice parts of a picture you're sunk. For the most part, Foster Fitzgerald has the requisite ruthlessness to take a chance, and it pays off.
