William Tillyer: The Mulgrave Tensile Wire Works and The Mulgrave Wire Scrolls

In The Mulgrave Tensile Wire Works, William Tillyer has produced probably the most radical paintings of his career. Stainless steel wires strung across a metal frame and held in tension by turnbuckles support geometrically shaped areas of metal mesh, woven through with paint reflecting the colours of the North Yorkshire landscape, where the artist has lived for most of his life. While evoking the landscape, the arrangements of the mesh shapes owe much to the Suprematists and Constructivists of the early twentieth century – El Lissitzky and Malevich, Rodchenko and Gabo – and even to Kandinsky.

In The Mulgrave Wire Scrolls, a single rectangle of mesh is mounted horizontally on a backboard painted in muted tones and in a ratio derived from that of Chinese scroll paintings. The mesh is again woven through with paint but in this series the panoramic, horizontal nature of the work make the reading of the landscape image more explicit. In some paintings clumps of trees, clouds, and buildings appear.