Yaeli Ohana: Games We Play

Overview

"We all play games in our lives, whether we admit it or not." Yaeli Ohana's introduction to this sequence of her work explains it as coming from a realisation that the strategies we learn in play as children come to shape how we approach adult challenges. Textual and numerical symbols from toys and puzzles are superimposed on abstractions in ways that remind the viewer of paint-by-numbers or literally portray a word-search; images of dice and toy soldiers overlay conflicted landscapes; small florals are like incredibly delicate textbook plates. All these 'games' refer to learning strategies and repetition and to the child's development of competitive and communicative strategies. The metaphors of repetition and negotiation within games, which in turn stand for situations in adult life, are evident in the series of works as a whole as well as individually.

The style of the works layers motifs and symbols and colours over paintings in a way that shows how they have been built up and where the choices have been made. Colours and dimensions vary significantly, from playing cards to the large-scale War Games works, as do the effects of watercolours, gilt and oils and the illustrative or gestural ways in which they're applied. Walking around the room, you recognise that these superimpositions of the symbols of childhood play are not introducing new elements to our perspective, just reminding us that they formed a part of it all along.