Page 11 - Art First: Jack Milroy: INterVENTIONS

that do precisely that that Milroy has an abiding fascination. Books of flowers, trees, birds,
reptiles, insects, mushrooms, flags, knots and a hundred other readymade collections have
been eagerly appropriated and dissected; their contents exploded and suspended in new and
striking arrangements.

This brings us to the second function of Milroy’s practice–the right side of the brain, the mode
and act of expression. Unlike Chatwin’s Utz, Milroy the collector does not seek to preserve and
protect his collection. Instead it is offered up to Milroy the artist, who is waiting with scalpel
poised. The act of dissecting and rearranging the prints and book-pages is a mixture of precision
and violence reminiscent of surgery. A previous exhibition was titled Surgery As a Pastime, and as
with surgery there is an element of discovery involved in the incision itself followed by (all being
well!) a positive resolution.

In his introductory essay to Milroy’s 2005 exhibition Doodling With Intent, Philip Hensher writes
of the tangled and tragicomic pieces that:
‘They can seem, initially, like dark and overwhelming pieces in their willingness to flirt not
just with catastrophe, but with the appearance of chaos. But, just as convincingly, they can
seem like the work of an artist who plucks order and lucidity from the surface of turmoil,
offering a generous act of consolation. The scalpel, with whch Milroy carries out much
of his work, is not just an instrument for the cutting of flesh, but an instrument of healing.‘

The act of cutting a book apart can be very provocative through a perceived ‘lack of respect’ for
an existing art form, perhaps all the more so as books become less of a necessity and thus more
rarefied through the advance of digital technology. Milroy’s practice though is not intent on out-
raging the viewer (though neither is it about simple appeasement), the motive is rather the
creation of beauty and intrigue. The books that give away their exquisite contents sparingly–
piece by piece, page by page–are suddenly unbridled and able to display all their treasures
in a single, bold statement. The book-works in this exhibition such as GARDEN FLOWERS in colour
express perfectly the sense of celebration in Milroy’s treatment of the book-form. As Michael
Richardson says in the quote preceding this essay, the surreal is found in the ability to give the
viewer a ‘different means by which to explore reality itself’–in this instance Milroy achieves the
feat through an elegant inversion of the recognized, paginated book into an immediate and
arresting three dimensional sculptural form.