Tilson

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 of British 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 Museum in Rotterdam in 1971, which was also shown in Belgium and Italy. Another retrospective of his work was staged at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1979. Tilson has exhibited widely throughout the world and is especially acclaimed in Italy. His work is represented in many of the major museums. Tilson is the first book to present a truly comprehensive selection of his oeuvre.