Reviewed by Marina Vaizey
September 21 1975

Colin Crumplin’s first one man show, at Garage in Earlham Street, of paintings, drawings and watercolours and wall hanging constructions is thoughtful, thought-provoking and fascinating. Some of it is alarmingly refined: white paintings in a complex of varied shapes, each surface dotted with minute holes which reflect a procedure dependant on both worked out structure and chance. There are mirrored images, repeated and serial images grids, tracings. Drawings of a coffee cup grew out of Raymond Queneau’s “Exercises in Style” in Barbara Wrights brilliant translation, in which the same story is told ninety -nine different ways. The coffee cup is presented in a variety of different technical drawings, drawings as art school exercises,drawings as fanciful and realistic. The subject is the same :but the way in which style affects meaning is fetchingly explored.

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