Throughout the 1980’s and the halcyon days of 90’s ‘Cruel Britannia’, to paint was to be critically damned. Of course painting was still popular outside the environs of the art world, but on the inside, ‘where it mattered’ it was a dead duck. "Avant gardists tended to regard paint and brushes as forms of kryptonite".

For self professed radicals holding onto the last vestiges of avant-garde outsider status, paintings litany of evil bedfellows – (macho chest puffing misogyny, servile suckling of corporate commodification etc.) was just too much to bear. It was in short, a lame, tame option. Painting appeared inextricably entwined with a form of cultural conservatism, unable to get to grips with forging a critically resistant art, capable of doing battle with the rise of Thatcherism and Reaganism.

In the 90’s it wasn’t much better. Attitudes did relax a bit, especially the politics, as we entered the laissez faire epoch of consensual culture, where all tastes and opinions were apparently equal. But though our new age of authoritarian liberalism found it in its heart to let painting back into the fold it wasn’t really sexy or cool enough, when faced with glamour of video or installation.

But things change. Painting’s been making one it’s periodic returns of late. There’s been a resurgence of interest, as there periodically is, because of its latent possibilities for communicating. Partly this is no doubt due to its recent lack of cultivation, which is no doubt why it has acquired an allure of critical curiosity for a new generation of artists. Of course its return also has something to do with the art market. A desire for an easily transportable exchangeable commodity shadows this ‘rediscovery’. Trading in non-unique video installation must stretch the patter of even the finest of dealers. However the important thing is not to completely conflate the two; not all painters are purely in it for the money, not all painters are reactionary.
Iain Hetherington is one of them. Hetherington has consistently produced work, adept at articulating his own sense of the complex position of painting within the culture. With his tongue in his cheek has talked about possessing a desire to carry on’ critically. While we never know if ‘Carry on critically ‘ would have become a classic to rival the sublime heights of Carry on Doctor, such a remark strangely reveals the kind of artistic dilemma an artist like Hetherington finds himself in – whether he cares or not!

Being seriously critical in painting has usually meant producing self-conscious examinations of the nature of the painting process, taking on board conceptualist criticisms of paintings, for example its claims for universal, liberated expression. Conversely there’s the option of opting for a determined stance of conservative defiance, which contemptuously snorts at these impudent heretics. It’s not much of a choice. Picking apart the bones of painting is akin to carrying out a self-inflicted autopsy and as about as much fun for the viewer as it is the practitioner. The other propels your bottom into the air as your head gets stuck in the ground.

Fortunately Hetherington is just too stubborn to accept either option as satisfactory. He may not be able to take too seriously the seriousness of much ‘intelligent painting’, and he probably can’t disguise his contempt for the formal banality of old school defenders of the faith, but he is determined to carry on. The German writer Theodore Adorno once wrote that "The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us". Hetherington sounds infused with the same defiance when he says that his work is an attempt navigate a murky cultural space where "art history, Trevor Macdonald, and my own perverse strategies" congeal. Carry on critically.