Visual Art

INST/AI oil/ill

DALZIEL + SCULLION - THE EARTH TURNED TO BRING US CLOSER Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Sat 7 Oct-Sun 25 Feb 2007

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(llama/emails going ahout their daily lives. This .‘JITT he projected onto three screens, aloy'xl‘», I‘)‘,()|‘.’III(J to evoke the Earth spinning on its axrf. The vastness of our .vorld I‘) intended to l)l(l‘.’l(l(,‘ a contrast WITTI the hrevity of human life. erriphasised hy the erriotiorlal IIITUIISIT‘,’ of Armstrong‘s; rriusii,. entitled 'Merrrory Takes My Hand'. Their- wrll he a oneolt live performance of the musir; on (3 Octoher lsponsored hy the Royal Bank of Scotland and by IIl‘.’lT£tTI()Il orin I, entitled 'Once'.

The three have collaborated in the past. irirtluding ‘One Minute' for Perth Concert Halls opening gala last year lalso with the RSNO). where they interwove tilm. recorded ambient noise and live pertorrrranee, BAT-TA awardwvrrining Arrristiong is Iarnous for his work on film scores as diverse as 'Moulin Rouge' and ‘World Trade Center". I'Iowever, his inspiration for this exhltntion is more Gorhals than Ground Zero. Remerrihering Visits to the rriuseuiri and gallery during his youth, Armstrong said. ‘It feels so good to be involved in making something tor the KeIVingrove. as for all Glaswegians it represents sorriething very special. (Ailsa Boyd)

SCULPTURE. INSTALLATION AND PRINT

SULPTURE. DRAWING AND INSI‘ALIATION

STEPHEN MURRAY AND KATE ORTON - NEW WORK SCOTLAND PROJECT

The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 4 Nov, COO

The work of Stephen Murray and Kate Orton shares some startling similarities. Both work in a variety of media - sculpture, drawing and mixed media constructions. Both, too, are interested in postive and negative form and each of the artists’ works forms part of an inter-related sequence. An example of the latter can be found in Orton’s sculpture, ‘En DUrer’s Font‘ and her mixed media assemblage ‘Labourers’. The sculpture (which portrays a stylised ecclesiatical font and also contains an oblique reference to the German artist’s advocacy of Roman typescript) contains a three- dimensional shape.

This form is echoed in ‘Labourers’ where it has been drawn here the artist has combined the shape with an ashtray where the cigarettes continue to smoulder. The rest of the work shows a table with a checked table- cloth, a scribbled fragment of a poem or song and a real pen. A suited, headless figure sits at the table - the author of the song? The smoker of the cigarette? The

WORD ORDER: CONCRETE POETRY AND ITS

INFLUENCE

The Changing Room, Stirling, until Sat 21 Oct 000

Although the main space is minimal. the Scottish poet Alec Finlay's playtul wall works adds gusto to Stirling's Changing Room Welcoming us to the exhibition is 'Loop' l2006l. cut out letters spelling the title four times in a repetitious circle. childisth reading 'ploop'. Another similar wall piece by Finlay is ‘Lollipop' (2006). the circular shape resembling a lollipop. the repetition of the word also pOSSIbly referencing the classic Chordettes song.

Artist David Bellingham plays with more pessunistic themes. In the paper diptych ‘Face Skull'. white on black letters draw face shapes: in one F and E are eyes. C is the nose and a row of Es form the mouth. in the other 8 and K are eyes etc. Word and meaning unite. but they lack Finlay's playful punch. Julie Johnstone has created a number of bland, minimal screenprints, both entitled “In a different light'

l2006l. pale letters rust Visible on a white background. though her series' of poetry-filled. handmade magazines are more thoughtful. exploring landscape and

the four seasons.

More exhilarating by far are the eight audio works in the back room. including Brien Gysrn‘s ‘Junk Is No Good Baby‘ (1962). a drawling American accent twists the title words into ridiculous arrangements like. ‘Nooo good baby Junk‘ and Ernst .Jandl's ‘Vom vom zum zum. what you can do wrthout vowels' l1988i. iROSie Lesso)

90 THE LIST 5—19 Oct 2006

Triumphal Arch by Katie Orton

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work is puzzling, perplexing even. It‘s part narrative and part intellectual game. The questions it provokes - such as the identity of the characters - never really get answered.

There are copious hints and references to the relationship between smoking, death, and a kind of film-noir sexiness but the small poetic narrative text which accompanies the work smacks of art student intellectualism which descends, unfortuntaely, into bathos: ‘We roll on. Breaching the peace in the colonnade and crowding the bin-top ashtray on George the Fourth bridge', etc.

Murray's work uses a combination of positive and negative to create work whose meaning is more abstracted than Orton's narratives. In the four pencil drawings which make up ‘From Teat to Cheak' a stylised breast is shown providing milk to an open mouth, and each of the two sets of the images are almost mirrors of the other. But despite its, no-doubt serious intent, the work fails to convince, forever locked within its own set of oblique references and never quite breaking through into the outside world of shared meaning and understanding. (Giles Sutherland)

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