Past and Present: an exhibition of early and recent oils by William Gringley

The Bermuda Society of Arts? Edinburgh Gallery at City Hall.

The opening reception for William Gringley?s exhibition of his oil paintings at the Society of Arts? Edinburgh Gallery at the City Hall suffered the same last minute postponement at the hands of the Corporation as did the Society?s own opening last Friday. Once again there will have been many who were disappointed.

This show is partly a retrospective and partly a show of current work. Unfortunately neither the paintings nor the catalogue dated any of the works and internal evidence is lacking because many of Mr. Gringley?s subjects antedate the artist?s own working lifetime.

Some of the early work may be surmised because they have the appearance of being drawn rather than painted.

The subject matter chosen by Mr. Gringley and that chosen by Johanna Plath, whose show runs concurrently at the Interim Gallery is surprisingly similar in that much of the former?s subject matter is also taken from old photographs.

This leads to a similar appearance of frozen indifference in many of the people depicted. This is particularly true of ?Failing Light?, one of the drawn works, where the wedding in progress seems to have all the festive jollity of a funeral and ?Kitchen Gossip? where the gossip must have been much less than titillating.

The same can only be said of the ?Dinner Party? where conversation must have been deadly. These, however, seemed to me to have been the artist?s early works and the show built very well from there on.

The studied gloom of ?Bookkeeper? and his depressed appearance is redolent of the St. George?s of 50 or 60 years ago as is ?Sunday in St. George?s?.

There the scene is rendered lively indeed by the appearance of no less than two cars at once on Duke of York Street (both black, of course) where blinds are actually open rather than shuttered.

Those who can remember St. George?s in the late 40s will know that that must have been a red-letter day indeed.

Emerging from the sense of atrophy prevalent in the St. George?s of those years, Mr. Gringley comes to town where the Easter floral parade is in progress.

His sense of the liveliness of the dense crowd, the festivity of the occasion and the way in which these colourful parades gripped the imagination of Bermudians and tourists alike transcends the two generations since they were a regular feature of Bermuda?s year.

?The Photographer, Front Street? is the major one of these works and might bring nostalgic tears to the eyes of those of us who remember them and a sense of real envy in those who don?t.

Only slightly marred by an unfortunate hand, ?Tower? gives us another glimpse of the parade, this time at the top of Burnaby Hill across from Mr. Nelmes? Tower Shop, a building long gone. The press and excitement of the crowd is palpable.

Oddly the picture titled ?Parade? isn?t of the Easter Parade at all, but of a wedding. In the way of formal photographs taken outside the church, the bride and groom look utterly unconvinced by the occasion, lending the whole painting the uncomfortable sense of disassociation.

Where photographed people are not the subject of the paintings Mr. Gringley?s work is much more successfully evocative. ?Heyl?s Corner, Front Street? from a photo taken when Mr. Heyl?s drugstore still occupied the corner and the old Bank of Bermuda and BF&M buildings hadn?t been replaced by the present ugly monstrosity is a splendid reflection of its era.

Reflection, indeed, is the key to the painting?s success. The street is wet, the few black cars are reflected as are the Mobylettes rounding the corner.

The only figure apparently immune to the dismal day is the traffic policeman on his little podium (the predecessor of the more fancy but now disused birdcage). For splendid nostalgia this is a painting hard to beat.

Similarly bleak is ?The Fisherman?. This time the effect isn?t created by rain, but by heat. The sense is of a long drought.

The eponymous fisherman stands immobile at the end of a dock cluttered with dry, bleached out bits of boat and odd planks presided over by a sign almost illegible with age. It reads ?Please keep this place clean? and has long been honoured in the breach.

By contrast with these rather sad voices from the past is a painting of one of Bermuda?s most truly dismal sights, ?The Canal?.

This is more properly known as the Pembroke Drainage Canal or by its nickname for the sister of and hostess for the Governor at the time of its construction, ?Hastings Brook?. Mr. Gringley has given it an air of cool and enticing romance. (Sheilagh Head has done the same thing.)

For all his evocative nostalgia, however, I was most taken by his series of three paintings done in mangrove swamps.

In these, light trickles through the canopy of tangled mangrove branches overhead, boats are moored among the roots with taut mooring lines contrasting elegantly with the twisting nature of root and branch and the sheer of traditional dinghies.

Dazzlingly a clear blue sky is reflected in the perfectly still water through the mangrove canopy for an effect daring in its brilliance.

This is a show of very considerable interest, both for the quality of the work and for the historical interest of their subjects. With only 25 paintings it is a quick visit and a very worthwhile one.