SmithField Gallery Review Metro, Friday 6th July 2007

Not many artists could attract Oasis’s Liam Gallagher to a private view. Former Stone Roses guitarist and songwriter John Squire manages it but is keewn to distance himself from any rock star credentials. He’s renounced music completely to devote himself to his career as an artist.

So, despite Gallagher’s appearance, this show is steadfastly ‘serious’. In a gallery next to St Barts, 23 works are squeezed on walls, columns and over doorways. Half are oil and sand, half oil and wax. Most appear to be traced using blindfolded calligraphy or freehand cartography. The lines seem like rivers carving a course.

As he matched his artwork to the music of his band, in album covers and promo posters, Squire was inspired by the action painting of Jackson Pollock. It’s a synaesthesia that has continued into this recent collection, with marks created from layers or melted on to the canvas with the physicality of a riff.

The sand partially obliterates colourful swirls (sometimes almost in a camouflage pattern, such as Priapism, pictured), making the paintings as much about what can’t be seen as what can.

The wax images are the strongest. In works such as Jesus And Mary, squiggles coalesce into Keith Haring-style figures, their outlines suggested by something part solid, part molten.

Fiona Macdonald