mum- Let’s get physical
Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop was created in 1987 to support and pursue excellence in sculpture in its widest sense. Gill Roth takes a peek at a Festival show featuring the work of two local artists.
Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop provides spacious workshops. studios and all the heavy duty equipment that both aspiring and established sculptors might need. A changing series of workshops and classes is open to the public and a continuing programme of open and selected shows of work in venues throughout Scotland and further afield is currently being developed. Physical, pan ofa touring exhibition in the Fringe. shows the recent work of two artists. John Hunter and Gordon Munro.
With his heavy abstract forms John Hunter is developing the ideas and themes of his previous work where he explored the significance ofeveryday objects such as typewriters and chairs.
FESTIVAL
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Receiver (elm wood and steel) by Gordon Munro
His work has been influenced by the constrasting experiences of working outdoors as well as among the complex machinery of an explosives factory. His sculptures reflect both worlds and are not fragile or delicate pieces but firmly rooted to the ground. reminiscent of old cast iron radiators or redundant factory machinery. ‘I like the contrast between formal shapes and squashed structures. like an accordion. he says.‘ l’m'. made from steel and wood in the shape ofa trunk dix ided in half appears to be breathing as if air is being pushed through the corrugated steel. ln Burma/rev a slim slab hovers in mid flight. caught between the restraining weights of a metal frame. ‘I want the pieces to look anonymous but reflective at the same time.’ says John. Gordon Munro‘s work is more directly autobiographical. Since losing his father and becoming one himself. he has been interested in the banding down of genetic information and how some part of us lives on after death. His work could be viewed like a jumbled tip sculptural family tree. lx’et'eii'ei: Com/tut and lil/UI‘HIU/ltul Super Highway are all concerned with communicating his new family situation. ‘lx’eceirer is an open book shape. with books waiting to be filled by life experiences. It‘s like a child whose life is like an empty vessch he says thoughtfully. I Physical Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. 25 llawthornvale. Newhaven until 27 Sept. Venue No 76. Buses 7.1 1.17.25.22 from the City Centre.
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Race of light
Barbara Bae, one of Scotland’s finest contemporary painters, has a new show of watercolours, mixed media paintings and coloured etchings that promises to be a highlight of the Edinburgh Festival.
Streaks of shocking pink, screaming fuchsia and burnished gold flood Barbara Rae’s paintings in watercolour and ink. Using the landscapes of Italy, Spain and Scotland as a starting point, she homes in on certain shapes, patterns and colours, almost as if using a telephoto lens to focus on sections in the natural world that inspire her. The frantic scribble made by a tractor ploughing up a field, the vertical lines of a pylon cutting across the horizontal world or surreal, sausage-shaped bales of hay silhouetted against the sky are all analysed and synthesised like a giant
still life. ‘I don’t paint views,’ she says
adamantly. ‘Until recently I’d never done a green painting in my life.’
Barbara uses small sketches as reference points for her larger, studio bound paintings, enabling her to remember the feeling of a place and what originally interested her.
i .: $3111; . _ Barbara Rae’s mixed-media work Sierra de Ronda
seasons because I like to see the variations and effects of the changing
‘Sometimes l’ll complete a painting in because they feed each other.’ triggers off another, the structure is one day while others take months. If I With the painting flat on the floor there but it develops a lot as l’m feel myself clamming up I leave it and v she works from all angles allowing the . painting. l’ll paint the same climate on a place.’ (Gill Both)
work on something else, so it’s materials to enhance what she wants landscape over and over again, at Barbara Rae - New Paintings, Scottish beneficial to have several on the go ‘ to do with the landscape. “One thing different times of day and at different Gallery, 15 Dundas Street until 5 Sept.
74 The List ll-l7 Aug 1995