Art
Peirw/i/tmxts
EDITIONS ALECTO: A FURY FOR PRINTS
City Art Centre, Edinburgh,
Sat 18 Oct-Sat 10 Jan
lt's London in 1962, the decade is starting to swing and two clever young whippersnappers have just moved into town. Cambridge graduates Michael Deakin and Paul Cornwall-Jones have an intuitive sense of where things are going and how they’re going to take them there. The precocious pair are making a bit of a name for themselves, commissioning lithographs of Cambridge colleges by the artist Julian Trevelyan, and attracting financial investment from affluent contemporaries. They see that print is where it’s at, baby.
Across the ocean, the New York art scene is exploding with fizzy pop art. Bright, flat colours, collages.
A Rake's Progress: The Seven Stone Weakling by David Hockney
montages, photographs - the fun and games of a generation throwing off the twinset shackles of the 505 (think of Warhol’s Campbell's soup and Lichtenstein’s comic girls). Deakin and Cornwall-Jones drink in the sweet, sticky bubbles and help London to create its own fizz.
Forty years on and the significance of this partnership is belatedly being recognised in a major retrospective. The duo established the Print Centre
artists. Edinburgh's beloved Paolozzi, better known here for his sculptural works, relished the opportunities it offered for experimentation. Some of the most iconic works by Britain's leading pop artist, Richard Hamilton, owe themselves to the printers. ‘When using silkscreen I like to start printing the edition and work with the printer along the way . . . I like to think of printmaking as part of the development of paintings. All three
marked a new juncture in collaborative production and one which was to continue for a further 20 sparkling years, constantly reinventing itself with fresh energy until a major fire in 1977. Ironically, one of the last major projects was an edition of Dante's Inferno, illustrated by Tom Phillips. The exhibition reveals for the first time the fruits of a dynamic, creative fusion between talented young men with a sharp
on Holland Street, Kensington and the Alecto prints have very much the character of being part of a wider project,’ Hamilton said of his work with the publishers. The process
publishing company, Editions Alecto, which quickly became the most important press for contemporary
PAINTING FRANCES WALKER/MARIANNE GREATED Talbot Rice, Edinburgh, until Sat 1 Nov 000
Dass/rig Islands by Frances Walker is an exhibition dedicated to the artist's travels around the coast of Scotland and its uninhabited islands such as St Kilda and Staffa. Drawn by the history and splendour of the Views. Walker Creates simple paintings. drawings and etchings that capture a gentle coastal walk rather than the raw ruggedness of Scotland. In Walker's straightforward interpretations of her surroundings you feel that you are looking through the eyes of the artist and are able to sense the admiration and pleasure that she took in her work. Walker's images. if not spectacular in style. are enjoyable because of the open perspective that invites us into the painting so we feel that we too are on a boat looking out to St Kilda or scrambling over the rocks littered vrith plastic jetsam. The detritus in Walker's paintings are bleak reminders that our beaches and seas are benig ruined by industrial and domestic rubbish. Pollution is also the reason behind the paintings of Marianne Greated: her compositions eliminate unnecessary detail in order to convey the potent essence of the scene. so that an oil rig or a trail of debris is clear as the cause of pollution. Both artists. in very different ways. reveal the beauh and impending tragedy that is Scotland's coastline. ilsabella Weir.
Leaving St Kilda by Frances Walker
90 THE LIST lei—.30 0:2 23.73
sense of the zeitgeist and the radical ideas of a new artistic generation. Pop, crash and burn in two heady decades. (Ruth Hedges)
LITHOGRAPHS BODY PRINTS
lntermedia Gallery, Glasgow, until Thu 23 Oct .0.
Joslin Towler has long worked With images of the female body. but where her 2001 show. /(:oriogr'ap/i-(—3. drew the ire of the Glasgow Council for its sexually explicit content. a new subtle series of body prints is unlikely to ruffle any feathers. Towler has developed her own lithographic method. using Vaseline-coated stone which she lies on. or presses herself against. First. there is a series of images made a month apart. a sort of body diary. or conterr'iplation of ageing. While these are strong self-portraits. the second set bears closer sCrutiny. These are abstracted images. only hinting at the human form. A pair of crossed arms become clouds over a hip bone landscape. a breast makes the head of a mutant creature. Much is made of the little whorls on the skin's surface. adding something sculptural to the flat black on white of the images. There is an odd air of confinement to them too. as Towler struggles to fit the confines of her stone slab. making the process. and so the body. an explicit part of the work. deSpite their slippery. abstract nature. At their best. Towler's lithographs move beyond self-portraiture into universal territory. asking the viewer to conSider the body and our relationship to it.
iJack Mottrami
Body Prints
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CONT -FLOW Pentagon Centre. Glasgow until Fri 31 Oct 000
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Flotilla by Jacqueline Gunn
Contra f_/r)‘.'./ if. a successfii' engageriierit between artist and space. Miranda ()larke sets up as arr architert. designing a conversion plan
for the ‘.'.’(tf(:tl()llf;(‘ Jacqueline (.‘iunn's asseir‘lilerl scalextrics tracks f.l‘.l’,(lllf: across and between f"lff(,'f:’l plastic sheets and letteriig, and Andrea V‘Jalsh's bone china sculptures lock like blown ostrich eggs place! upon circular ll‘tfffflf; Elizabeth Turner and Br/fget Kennedy's iredets and drawing juxtapese grids and perpendicular structures ir assimilated spatia' installations. while Keit'r' Ashforr 's sinister electro'ii', insect-like rr‘odele appear alien to the space. Tricks of light “()H‘OQCHIS‘J the seerr‘irigi, disparate e‘ie'i erit‘. of the shoxr. and rrwcrs. ‘.‘.’IHUO.'.’S and light projections bring the surrrmndirg geographical context within the specific works. Iri the .iast spaces; of the .'/£:f(:'l0.li)‘: the she fl‘a,’ appear erript, but this enables the stado and eChees of the so"0.rr"firig comexr tc til: the space aplent, ’MEJ’.T'1€:.‘.’ Hear”,