Deutscher and Hackett

The following excerpt is from Lindsay, R., The Seventies: Australian paintings and tapestries from the collection of National Australia Bank, National Bank of Australasia, Melbourne, 1982, p. 23


Zone II 1974 demonstrates, with its experiments in surface texture and spatial manipulation plus the use of the circular rhythms to organize the abstract structure of the work, Asher Bilu’s continuing concern for a symbolic representation of the cosmos – ‘The cosmos has become’ he said in the early 1960s ‘a reality and awaits the artist who will communicate its full wonder to us.’¹ He has experimented with different surface textures and effects, often adding a variety of materials to the paint or charring the paint surface with a blowtorch to achieve an organic molten planet-like surface evoking connotations of primordial creation and galactic cosmos. After building up the surface textures of his works on a single base Asher Bilu began, during the 1970s, to create low-relief works in which various free-form elements were overlapped, raised and lowered in relation to each other. In Zone II the circular patterns and lines echo the cyclic rhythms of the universe where the various orbits of the planets trace overlapping paths and provide a structuring model for this work.’

1. Artist’s statement in Reed, J., The New Painting 1952 – 1962 Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1963, p. 47