Orders and Divisions

Take a step closer to the paintings though, and this smooth surface is interrupted by little specks of dust caught in the paint. For me, beyond the awe of Heyer’s technical ability (which is ridiculously accomplished), beyond the mawkish feelings of schoolboy sorrows, these little flecks of skin, mites and dirt embedded into the surface activated these paintings. They speak of time passing, of motes caught in the afternoon light and intimate  the slow returning of objects and people to their inevitable state of decay. Settling onto the surface and getting caught in the oil, these specks reminded one that these works were rendered slowly and painstakingly in paint. Heyer’s processes are revealed further in both Upper Stairs and Lower Stairs where minuscule dams of paint have built up due to the masking process used to create the hard lines of the edges of the walls – these little flaws reveal the labour. And it is this painstaking technique of representing (crisp, super-real) which seems wholly appropriate to the subject matter: labouring painter matching labouring scholar, the endless lick and tickle of tiny brushes replicating almost perfectly the dents and draggings of students’ feet on linoleum floors. There seems to be a desire through work and time to penetrate the surface, to get under the linoleum to some concrete revelation beneath. 

However, revelations of mediumness, when the medium reminds us that we are looking at a rendered surface, are a double-edged sword. In Basins I  and II, the regular shapes of the basins distort towards the edges, replicating the curvature of the lens in her source material. It reminds one of the snappy quickness of a photograph, which seems to have no place in this quiet labour-intensive world. While of course, such intricate renderings could hardly be achieved without the use of photographs, seeing it laid bare breaks the suspension of disbelief.

Heyer’s title – ‘Order & Division’ – suggests that my semi-nostalgic feelings for labours past are not her main focus. Indeed her representations of funnels and passageways, surfaces and penetrations suggest that the main subject is the rhetoric of these kinds of spaces. There is the idea that the planes and sections of the architecture perpetuate certain behaviours: a division between students and staff, boys and girls, strong and weak. They take on an aura whose sentiment lies in a set of archaic beliefs handed down to us from the Athenian Lyceum via British public schools. These schools Heyer chooses so obsessively to portray  become incubators of conservatism: no open-plan rooms, no mixing outside the playground. The contemporary gaudiness of this pretension of classical education and its rhetoric of conservatism is contrasted by the needs and deprivations of a modern, budget-constricted institution: easy-clean beige enamel paint, flourescent  lighting, those little hygiene balls in the boy’s urinal, and aluminium windows. 

Of course, these observations are neither new nor particularly perceptive. Here, the mediumness of painting rears its head: besides an intensive illusionism, what does super-real painting offer us in terms of a study of space? I am caught again by the dust. It must be a litany of labour, precise copying as an almost religious undertaking. Heyer’s studio is a medieval scriptorium, where knowledge is gathered to be endlessly and repetitively copied. An apparent contradiction strikes, though. Copying by hand is an essentially useless task today. Better technologies exist, as her photographic source material attests. What we are left with when the function is removed is the rhetoric of copying, of slowness and precision. It creates an effect of profundity and an illusion of careful thought. Rather than producing critical insight, it reflects the Protestant work myth which is drilled into us by these very schools. Work is good. The harder you work, the more you penetrate the mysteries of God. However, this ethic of moralistic labour, while possibly profoundly spiritual on an individual level, has  collectively laid the foundation for modern capitalism.