Distillation
- Artist: Gillian Ayres CBE RA
- Date: 1957
- Medium: Oil paint and household paint on hardboard
- Dimensions: support: 2134 x 1524 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is the "Distillation" by Gillian Ayres. Painted in 1957, it’s a riot of colour and motion that feels like a live, breathing surface. Ayres didn’t use a traditional brush all the time – she poured straight from a can, squirted paint from a tube, and even dragged rags across the hardboard. She mixed the paint with turpentine to keep it fluid, so she could manipulate it on the spot, reacting to the canvas as it soaked.
The piece was worked on the floor, a choice that allowed the artist to treat the whole surface as a single plane. She was inspired by photographs of Jackson Pollock, but she was more interested in the area and substance of the paint than in the linear drips Pollock is known for. Her aim was an “idea of no composition” – nothing dominates anything else, so colour and shape coexist without hierarchy.
Ayres also drew on the ideas of Roger Hilton, who taught her about space, edge, and colour. This painting sits at the intersection of gestural abstraction and a sort of spatial balancing act that prefigures the later, larger scale murals she would produce. It’s a powerful snapshot of a moment when British abstraction was finding its own, unmistakable voice.
See it in person
Distillation is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
