PAINTING AND INSTALLATION LAURENCE ELLIOT
AND CARA TOLMIE
- STUDIO SIX
Market Gallery. Glasgow, until Sat 17 Jun.
For their latest show, Market Gallery has added a mist to the selection process. Rather than simply inviting two artists — Laurence Elliott and Cara Tolmie - to exhibit work in the space. the pair have been given the gallery to use as a temporary studio. making work in the place where it WI“ be shown.
For Tolmie. the gallery-studio has had an Impact on her work. 'lt's had much more of an impact than I expected.‘ she says. ‘I've had all these Ideas that I haven't been able to work out. and thought I'd be working on them. But once I got into the space. it felt a bit like a cold war nuclear bunker. That has had an influence on the way the work looks. and the materials I used.‘
While Tolmie's work — built constructions and Video - is necessarily related to the space in which it is installed. Elliott works With distinct themes. ranging from charity. the posnion of the artist. and. Currently. a riff on Munch's ‘The Scream’. Still, working at Market has had an impact. “We've kept the shutters up as much as possble.‘ he explains, 'So we‘ve been having loads of banter with wee neds coming in off the street. And my paintings and ink drawings have been interesting to do. just because of the weird harsh light you get here.’
Thus. as well as pitching two very different artists against each other. this show represents something of a collaboration: between artist and gallery. (Jack Mottram)
PAINTING AND EMBROIDERY ALEANA EGAN Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Fri 7 July
Review
DRAWING. PAINTING. PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM GROUP SHOW - ALL DRESSED UP WITH NOWHERE TO GO
Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, until Sat 24 June 0000
While the work in All dressed up with nowhere to go at Sorcha Dallas' gallery is recognisany related to a specific strand of Dallas’ usual aesthetic (much of the work is sombre, made of ‘non-art’ materials and on a knife-edge between the minimal and the conceptual), there is fresh wit and colour aplenty. The show, curated by Broadway 1602’s Anke Kempkes (New York), brings local and international artists together for our delectation: Seth Price, Michael Hakimi, Edwin La Liq, Nick Mauss, Agnieszka Brzezanska, Freiderike Clever, and local boy Ryan Doolan.
The work on show explores false confidence, the hidden meanings and lacunae in our public personae and the cartoons we make of ourselves through our performances as social creatures. In Brezezanska’s ‘Rasa Pan’ (Race of Ladies) a female figure turns to look at the viewer with a balloon-as-bustle shoved up the
If colourists are poets. then surely Aleana Egan 's w0rk is the elegiac hue among them. Composing a palette of pale and bruised colours in a series of new abstracted paintings and
installations. this y0ung Irish artist is known for her heavily symbolic bricolage. Reconstructing the new premises of Mary Mary Gallery around a central ‘foundation‘ structure. Egan's latest work is influenced by her residency in the leafy isolated spot of Cove Park, in the west of Scotland. Gently working natural and raw materials through a craftsman's approach of embroidery. dyeing and bonding. work is rendered With a delicate. if
not anxiously nostalgic. care.
Keen to create the gallery as a completely immmerSive environment. where mood is dictated by colour, architecture and touch. Egan's art is not only aware of its murky relationship to psychoanalysis but appears to be haunted by the very assooation. Works are often framed with wood from her father‘s garden, and the fingerprint of the artist is impressed onto the installations with organic paints and dyes. The mark of the artist is also a
mark of Egan's absence.
The sourcing of her inspiration. as well as her materials, is just as Significant: many of the artworks from past exhibitions take their titles from literary figures such as Iris Murdoch and
DH Lawrence. Fabricating her work from a horde of influences. the work is frequently experimental. Egan is a surprisingly assured artist for her age. and her ambitious designs and constructed environments will undoubtedly be quietly provocative affairs. (Isla Leaver-Yap)
back of her skirt. It's a simple action and a visually rich image that brings with it a weighty but witty history of feminism. Her ‘Untitled' abstract canvas also relates to this tradition, but turns it upside down with glee; an abstract form becomes an ornate chignon and a bum- hole, with a gold star, which acts as both painful spiky ornament and indicator of the orifice's opening.
Ryan Doolan’s installation also uses humour to deconstruct the artist. A bust of Bertrand Russell gazes at a parade of caricatures, their shadows on the wall behind them betraying the associations we usually apply — drug-dealing ‘neds' become a sexy little threesome, a gesticulating rapper becomes a saluting Nazi. The significance of our clothing as encoded regalia is also explored by Price and La Liq. Price's ‘Vintage Bomber‘ becomes a polystyrene copy of a copy, the ‘original' social significance of the jacket being wiped out (if it ever existed). La Liq's drawings of dandified ‘Iads' wield faux-sceptres and stringless harps, like contemporary figures at a Roman saturnalia.
As a show with a sceptical neo-humanism at its heart, this exhibition demonstrates that time, style and fashion may change, but human beings remain the same - vain, ridiculous and tragic. (Alexander Kennedy)
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Where The Water Tastes Like Vlfine
8—22 Jun 2006 THE LIST 93