Scott Kilgour:
Interspace
Glasgow: Glasgow School of Art until Sat 30 Oct ***
After graduating from Glasgow School of Art, Scott Kilgour moved to New York in 1983. As a painter he became fascinated by the abstract work of artists such as Frank Stella and Barnett Newman. But while high abstraction was often seen as a ferociously American art style, Kilgour has developed interests in more ancient and international forms of geometry and ornament. The result is a series of hard-edged monochrome paintings and installations.
The simple forms, geometrical shapes and linear patterns that interest Kilgour can be found in any number of eras and places, from Indian temple architecture to Celtic art, and from ancient Pacific cultures to the modern architecture of Mies van der Rohe. Of course, and this is where the setting of the exhibition is particularly
Ornamental Bricks by Scott Kilgour
appropriate, the square and the grid are seen everywhere in the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Kilgour is interested in series, in numbers, in repetition. His groups of work - Abstract Language and Ornamental Bricks - are not just intended to summarise the past but to explore a common language. It is an interesting project that begs all kinds of questions in a complex and multi- cultural world.
In his most abstract paintings, Kilgour takes ornamental forms, then analyses and works them down until they virtually dissolve. They are no longer linear, but some kind of data, like a mathematical programme or a pixel. However Kilgour returns again and again to the decorative. Never more so than in Knots And Crosses, a six foot screen which contains sixteen individual rotating prints of Celtic knots. The images are ancient and immediate, and the screen serves as a summary of Kilgour’s work - a philosophical furnishing. (Moira Jeffrey)
Martin Boyce/Ross
Sinclair
Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery until Sat 13 Nov ***** The belief that the city would be a modern age utopia was one of the most powerful early 20th century dreams. Now, on the equivalent of the home run to a new millennium, the metropolis is seen more as a spreading menace — hence this timely show by two of Scotland's most investigative artists, Martin Boyce and Ross Sinclair. Boyce's When Now Is Night is a space lined with grid-patterned wallpaper. Inspired by Saul Bass's credit sequence for Hitchcock's North By Northwest, it is a distillation of the metropolis. Here the city is more like a web ready to ensnare or disorientate, a maze to get lost in. In the neighbouring space hangs a homage to“the century's most
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Ross Sinclair's Journey To The Edge Of The World
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utilitarian lighting fixture: the strip light. Arranged to form a large Spiderweb, it emits a gentle hum. One is not so much caught in a web but in a field of harsh white light.
Upstairs, the location is more otherworldly. Sinclair’s Journey To The Edge Of The World is an investigation into St Kilda, which, 100 miles west of Scotland, was the UK‘s most remote inhabited island until its excavation in 1930. Over the intervening years, its history has been romanticised; but was it really possible to rebuild Utopia? Sinclair’s installation combines cardboard boxes, the occasional piece of text and old film footage. Yet cupboard settlements are far from robust. It is not so much a case of castles in the air but cardboard boxes that could easily tumble down. (Susanna Beaumont)
reviews ART
Felim Egan 5; ‘~ § ,1
Edinburgh: Ingleby Gallery until Sat 6 :~ - :33
NOV *tit
The canvases are filled with a spread ~g“ :1,» “A
of mottled colour in sea greens, greys
and blues; hovering over these quiet, ‘ '
reserved expanses of colour are small _ .
squares of contrasting colour. Like 1
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stray pieces of patchwork, these , (Eff: ‘2 is" ‘ “ '
squares give rhythm to the canvases, » _ .
offering up a kind of punctuation. ‘4 Felim Egan is an artist based in .
Dublin, whose paintings are East by Fem“ Egan
meditative and given such names as Winter Song, Dawn Still and West Shore. They throw up thoughts of flat landscapes where colours bleed and blur into soft mists and low skylines. In Scattering, murky greens are dispensed with: here, against a creamy backdrop, crimson squares of colour dance. (Susanna Beaumont)
Robin Philipson
Edinburgh: National Gallery Of Modern Art until Sun 14 Nov **AA
A row of dead black crows hang limp, dangling by their necks from wire. Beneath them soldiers run, backs lowered to avoid gun fire and, below these scurring men lies a panel of impastoed reddish paint. Philipson‘s painting Stone The Crows is a chilling take on warfare. Inspired by World War I, a war he didn’t encounter first hand, it demonstrates Philipson's passioned eye.
This retrospective of Philipson, who died in 1992 - the last in a series looking at Edinburgh School artists — is not consistently strong, but its powerful moments win through. Philipson was clearly a man who was moved by both the horrors and the delights of the world. There are paintings of cock-fights witnessed while living in Burma and jewel-like cathedral interiors. He works the paint hard to produce either flurries of colour or suggest anguish: the startling piece, The Burning, has all the intense horror of a triptych by Francis Bacon.
(Susanna Beaumont)
i ‘z _ l Crucifixion 1969 by Robin Philipson
Stephen Partridge Glasgow: Street Level until Sat 27 Nov **~k*
For One Of Your Smiles by Stephen Partridge
Two smiles, a slap and a sentence form the core of Stephen Partridge's lean exhibition of works. Partridge is Professor of Media Art at Duncan Of Jordanstone College in Dundee, and this show is a selection of three digital works from a larger exhibition.
There is a wonderful contrast of scale between For One Of Your Smiles, consisting of two enormous images projected onto facing gallery walls, and Slap Movie, a tiny work which requires you to stoop down to see it. Both works involve sound and visuals to crisp effect: the images, rather than sitting there passively, bite back at the viewer.
Partridge has pioneered the use of video and new media for some 25 years, and his work as artist and teacher is explored in the catalogue and his website, which can be accessed in the gallery. His playful interest in language and the limitations of new technology is revealed in This Is A Sentence, an interactive CD-ROM produced with composer David Cunningham. This is rigorous, clear-sighted work from a ground-breaking figure. (Moira Jeffrey)
21 Oct—4 Nov 1999 THE "8183