Bill Riley.

The speaker for this week’s lesson was Bill Rilley. For over 30 years, Bill Riley has been painting and is now a lecturer at Manukau School of Visual Arts. From spray painting, to using paint rollers his process varies depending on the way he feels at the time. During the lecture, he talked about how “boring” painting gets at times, forcing him to experiment with different techniques and using a selection of painting tools.

The static nature of a painting and the idea of portraying a painting that seems to have movement incorporated in, or around it, also fascinate Bill. An instillation that explores how we perceive movement and colour inside a painting, is Bill installation “Frequency”. Bill used a CMYK mixing technique to apply colour to these paintings. Web Definitions defines CMYK as “The CMYK colour process is a subtracting colour model, used in colour printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself”. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some colour printing; Cyan, magenta, yellow and black” – Web Definitions. He used the CMYK mixing process to force the viewer look closer and to see how the viewer identify colour.

Bill spoke a bit about the influence of documentary films about artists such as Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso. The films depicted the artists as ‘puppets’, yet the film was suppose to celebrate them as artist and their practice. Bill felt a connection with the artist because he was previously a commissioner and has some bad experience from this. Bill is against this idea of “puppets” and has since developed into a socialist. Bill describes a socialist as “not a communist, it is more about treating people equally”. The inspiration form these films lead Bill to take part in a project called the 422 project.

The 422 project is the new focal point for Bill at this point in his career. He uses waste and recycled materials, rather than expensive fine art materials. Bill accumulates left over card from packaging companies, and left over paint. By doing so he embraces conservational Issues such as recycling and caring for the environment. Bill paints each individual piece of card and arranges them in stacks, according to colour and size. So far, bill has over 7500 pieces of individual cardboard. The 422 project is an interactive project and encourages members of the community to come into the gallery and arrange the colored sheets in which ever way appeals to them. The structures created from the interaction of the audience add a sculptural element to the project as well.