Review relating to an exhibition, 1998
Published by: Wasafiri
Year published: 1998
Number of pages: 4

Substantial review of Aubrey Williams major exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1998. The review  appeared in Wasafiri, No. 28 Autumn 1998, pp. 54 - 57. The review was sparsely illustrated, with only one monochrome reproduction of a Williams painting. The same painting, Visual Idea, 1963, oil on canvas, also appeared in colour, on the cover of the issue. The first part of the review is given over to discussing the significance and work of three Guyanese figures, Wilson Harris, Denis Williams, and Aubrey Williams himself. Denis Williams had only recently passed away. Having contributed a text to the catalogue that accompanied this Whitechapel exhibition, it was perhaps fitting for Louis James to draw the reader’s attention to Denis Williams, a man of many parts, who was, amongst other things, an “art historian, painter, novelist, anthropologist, archaeologist…”The review goes on to offer a biographical sketch of Aubrey Williams.

The review goes on to discuss the significance of the publication Guyana Dreaming, and the catalogue that accompanied the Whitechapel exhibition. Ultimately, this is not so much an exhibition review as it is an appraisal of Aubrey Williams’ practice. Towards the end of the text, Louis James argued, “Aubrey’s work is unfashionably ‘Romantic’ in that it sees time most profoundly explored in the timeless, and the human transcendently cosmic. Like Wilson Harris, Aubrey was fascinated by the petrographs found mysteriously carved in the Guyanese interior, whose Amerindian name, ‘timehri’, has been variously interpreted as ‘the hand of God’ and the ‘mark of the hand’.”