Aubrey Williams, Olmec Maya - Now and Coming Time 1985. Tate. © The estate of Aubrey Williams.
This display explores Williams’s involvement with ecology, cosmology, music and pre-colonial civilisations
Born in Guyana in 1926, Aubrey Williams arrived in London in 1952 to study painting. Throughout his career he worked between the UK, US and Jamaica. The works in this display were painted in the 1970s and 1980s, an exceptionally creative period for Williams.
Williams was a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, and his interest in cosmology is evident in these works. He used cosmic and natural forms connected to the landscape, particularly imagery from Indigenous cultures of Central America and the Caribbean. The pre-colonial histories of the Olmec, Maya, Arawak and Carib peoples and their legacies were enduring concerns. In Williams’s paintings, these fragmented references hint at the region’s violent history of ecological and social devastation, the result of European invasions.
Additionally, this display includes three paintings from Williams’s series inspired by the music of Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich (1906–1975). Williams sensed an apocalyptic quality within the music and felt his work reflected similar anxieties about the fate of the world. Both artists create works exploring the cycles of destruction and renewal within cosmological and human histories. Williams’s cross-cultural practice continues to resist simple classification.
This display reflects his engagement with international developments in abstraction and his enduring connection to ecology and expressive forms across time and place.
Balraj Khanna, Autumn Forest 1965
The warm brown tones of this painting, peppered with bursts of orange and yellow, are scored by grid-like markings. Khanna simultaneously evokes a macro and micro impression of the forest, suggesting both an aerial landscape and the grooves of a tree’s bark. This painting was made in France while Khanna recovered from a motorcycle crash. In stark contrast to London, the French town neighboured a forest. Immobilised, his leg in a cast, Khanna recalled lying in the grass: ‘I felt as if I had never seen trees before in all my existence.’
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artworks in Aubrey Williams
Balraj Khanna, Saffron Field 1967
In 1966 Khanna began embedding string into his compositions, arranging it in twisting curves under layers of paint. Here, Khanna removed the string, allowing its white imprint to break through the sea of vivid orange. This rich saffron colour is highly symbolic in Indian culture. For Khanna it represented fire and purity. Working intuitively, Khanna allowed the string to determine the composition, adding geometric and organic forms into its intersections and bends. He explained, ‘I start feeling the structure of a painting – like a musician composing a raga and creating a feeling.’
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Balraj Khanna, Out of the Blue (2) 1987
Here, Khanna incorporates sand into the painting’s surface, creating the illusion of waves or ripples. The bright colours and shimmering texture evoke a dream-like space, reminiscent of the ocean or sky. After preparing the canvas with a mixture of sand and primer, Khanna applied countless layers of paint in a fine mist. In the early 1980s he did this using a diffuser and his own breath, but later adopted a spray gun. At various intervals Khanna added stencils, removing them at the final stage to reveal a kaleidoscopic cast of characters floating weightlessly across the scene.
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artworks in Aubrey Williams
Art in this room
Balraj Khanna
Autumn Forest
1965
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Balraj Khanna
Garden
1987
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Balraj Khanna
Festival
1970
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Balraj Khanna
Discourse of the Wonderer
1967
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Balraj Khanna
Such a Long Journey
1967–1968
Balraj Khanna
Saffron Field
1967
Balraj Khanna
Out of the Blue (2)
1987