PHOTOGRAPHY PAUL GRAY - ALL FOR ONE Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 24 Jul 0000
Labours of love are funny things. Sometimes the love gets in the way, colouring judgement — obscuring good, critical calls - and at other times, the love urges on and drives a committed, insightful exploration. Thankfully, and appropriately, Paul Gray’s portrait of his beloved Heart of Midlothian falls into the latter category.
A year in residence at the club’s Gorgie ground, Gray presents a series of large, square photographs documenting the club at times of stillness, before or after the fans, players and staff bring their sweat and song to the place. The high quality images are strong on composition, showing the construction of the stadium in all its concrete, metal lines while taking you into its more private cavities.
‘Gorgie Road’ shows a night scene of shuttered up shops, a rail bridge, bus stop and artificial light burning bright while Tynecastle beams floodlights behind dark tenements like a landing in ET. The ‘Stadium Control Room’ is a foreboding place with CCTV screens barricaded behind a thick-framed window overlooking the pitch. Gray has paired down his work to forge nice juxtapositions like in ‘Home Dressing Room’ and ‘Away Dressing Room’ and ‘Centre spot at the start of the Season’ with ‘Centre spot at the end of the Season’. If ever you were to forget that football was about 11 men kicking a ball around, take a look at these dingy changing rooms where, despite the home one pertaining a certain smoothness, the Victorian hooks, small windows and 705 linoleum floor remind you how reality is a far cry from the glamour of football’s media image.
A video piece called ‘Prediction’ shows fans predicting the score at three separate games - ‘Two-nothing for the Hearts; nae bother’ is the assured forecast of one old Jambo lady. It seems a fair bet. (Ruth Hedges)
ARCHITECTURE ARCHIPRIX The Lighthouse, Glasgow, until Sun 7 Aug 0
Every two years. Archiprix International gathers together work by the best new graduates in architecture. urban planning and landscape architecture. This should make for a thrilling exhibition here, after all. are the people who Will be shaping our envn‘onment in years to come.
Sadly. the show borders on being a ccmolete failure. lach graduate is granted limited space. and that space is used badly. liiere are tumbles o. sketches and illegible plans. accompanied by texts '.'.’lllf3ll are ezther self consciously Jokey or riddled with jargon. In other words. it is lllll )()F;‘;lt>'€} to tell how a given l)l()](?(2l would look and work it realised. and irnpcssible to understand the design process.
There are exceptions. Niko Sirola's ‘EStonr: f-Saur‘a' gets the clear treatment it deserves. being a beautiful. and beautiful", functional structure. perfectly attuned to its Surroundings. It is possible to grasp what l iétl‘l Ross has in mind for his witty rejuvenation of Budapest's famous failure. Statue Park. And. thanks to an interactive installation. Neri ()xman's presentation. ‘l’eitormatwe Morphologies'. communicates; a fascinating in‘.»estigaticn «it the use of the helix in architecture.
8 for the rest. we have t > take the” on their .wul. as it is only the text statements that make any sense. lhis a! east makes it possible to identify trends: all the graduates; are keen l)lt)t;l(3l" soixeis. not given to grand architectural statements. With many highlighting the need for buildings to reflect and be inspired by the sites on which the, are built. But. as a showcase for new architecture. this exhibition is pointless, stark l‘/i’»lil§tllll
92 THE LIST 21 July ‘1 Aug 2 4/;
VIDEO AND SCULPTURE HATEBALL Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 30 Jul 0..
Nathaniel Mellors specialises in ridicule. comedy and randomness. The London- based artist has created a range of specially commissioned video works and sculptures for the latest Collective exhibition. There is nothing neat and clean about this gallery environment though. Projections slope against makeshift screens on the ground. speakers for one video installation are shoved into a corner so that they seem to correspond with a completely different work. and another room is left half empty. Another projection is squeezed into a narrow doorway. while the Hateball itself pulsates like a psychedelic lava lamp in the
corner. as Visitors are forced to negotiate the space in near darkness. His strange
scaffolding structures of 'Ruth and Richard are perhaps a little immature, but wrthin the bizarre surroundings they suddenly seem pretty normal.
Mellors' anarchic approach to the exhibition environment is as haphazard and misanthropic as the content of the works themselves. His main video piece. ‘MACGOOHANSOC'. appears like a party-political piss-take. Full of spot-on comic scripting and even a cameo by Dan Fox. an editor of hip arts magazine Frieze. the film is a scathing critique against the fashion of political propaganda and protest. It's difficult for the work to be viewed in isolation from the recent (38 events. which only add to its poignancy as the seven-foot tall fascistic leader of MACGOOHANSOC spouts Thatcherite lines and begs to ‘reverse the evolutionary flow'. Mellor's dry parodies articulate the hilarity and stupidity of empty rhetoric. with a rare kind of youthful confidence and entertaining wit.
It's JUSI a shame that he didn't fit in more work. llsla Leaver-Yap)