Aly Helyer

PM/AM, 16 March - 15 April 2022

Stepping into this show of paintings by Aly Helyer is like snooping on a set of family portraits of their beloved son. Here he is in the living room by the floral wallpaper, that's him in his nice yellow shirt, that's him with his friends, that's him with his siblings in a nude family group portrait (they're a very open family).

The family evidently dotes on the boy. Not without reason, as he is the very image of a Byzantine Baby Jesus - from his straight Greek nose to his square head - but one who's grown into the adolescent Jesus of Generation Z.

There's a whole history of golden boys in this character, whose young life unfolds in a fragmentary narrative as you meander through PM/AM gallery. There are echoes of the archaic kouros (again, it's the nose), a distant antecedent of the Christian iconography, with a dose of Timothée Chalamet in there too with the pointy chin.

You don't warm to him particularly. Even those big dewy eyes give little away, and he seems content to hang around posing archly or feeling up his mates. The warm pinks and blues with the acidic yellows and greens give a sense of cushioned frailty to him, the sickly porphyrogenitus most likely to be murdered by an uncle in some sinister court intrigue. 

In one small painting in the corner of the gallery basement he's got his first beard and is starting to resemble the lank, dank, beardy bloke who saves the world (as the history of art would have it). Put in with dark strokes over a translucent wash, his gnostic gaze cuts through its medium and looks right at you. Unlike the rest that shrug and float away, here he begins to fulfil his promise.