VIDEO INSTALLATION
ARON TARJANI AND MIRANDA WHALL: IF I OPEN MY EYES I MIGHT SEE TEETH
Washington Garcia, Glasgow, RUN
ENDED CO.
The second offering from the Glasgow artist-run collective Washington Garcia brings together video and film work by Hungarian artist Aron Tarjani and Cardiff-based Miranda Whall. (Their first exhibition, a month ago. featured installed drawings and animation by Icelandic artist Sigga Bjorg Sigurdardottir, and acted as a safe entry into the Glasgow art-scene.) Whall’s animated watercolours play with the badly understood Freudian idea that women and animals are narcissists, displaying themselves for an invisible gaze. The viewer (male or female) can never wield this omnipotent gaze, of course. but Whall forces the onlooker to occupy such an impossible position, making him/her watch well-painted representations of the artist masturbating with a dildo while birds. a fish and cat encircle the
artist at work. This isn’t even slightly shocking, demonstrating that porn is wallpaper, that art can be thought of as self-congratulatory and so on. The viewer acts as an inconsequential variable.
Sexual metaphors leak into the second room, where a film of Tarjani shucking an oyster is playing. The juxtaposition with Whall's work may be crude. but it is also humorous. The oyster is forcibly taken in this mini- celebration of sex and violence, but the money shot is off camera — we do not see if the artist spits or swallows this glorious glob of libido fuel. (Alexander Kennedy)
PAINT ING. PHOTOGRAPHY
GROUP SHOW: DELIA BAILLIE IAIN STURROCK HARRISON, KAREN KIRKwoo , SOPHIE MCKAv KNIGHT Amber Roome, Edinburgh, until Thu 8 Mar
Given that Amber Roome is a small-scale gallery space. and that five artists are involved in this show, one can assume it will be a rather intimate affair. The five artists are not thematically linked. but there do seem to be fragments of narratives and hidden stories running through each of their works. Dundee-based Baillie and Sturrock have been painting collaboratively, via a love-hate, trial and error relationship (likened to the turbulent brotherly bond of Romulus and Remus) attempting to wrestle with and recognise a collaborative. mutual style. 80 will they succeed in foregoing individual expression and
ego. and agree on the final outcomes?
Kirkwood's paintings use layers of paint to create visceral evocations of the cosmos, its extreme beauty and terrifying magnitude. In a slightly different vein, Harrison is fascinated by our surveillance-driven society. obsessed with voyeurism, and the latent fear this has induced in us all. She explores this notion through images of paranoid interiors and
exteriors.
McKay Night is similarly watchful. though hers is a fear of the unseen — the supernatural spirits that haunt so many of our subconscious minds. McKay positions herself alongside Arthur Conan Doyle. George EIIory Hale and Robert Louis Stevenson, all of whom have shared her neuroses, and refers to the spirit world and the ‘Little People'.
Amber Roome is offering up a chance then to delve into the quiet sensory phenomena within these paranoid, playful and spiritual art works. (Rosie Lesso)
SCULPTURE NICK EVANS Mary Mary, Glasgow, Sat 10 Mar—Sat 14 Apr
Fresh from his solo show at Tate St Ives, Nick Evans returns to Glasgow to exhibit new work - his first exhibition in his representative gallery’s new Dixon Street space. Evans’ practice has developed a great deal since his early exhibitions in Glasgow in 2002. His solo show at Tate St Ives, the result of a sustained period of work as the gallery’s fourth artist in residence, confirmed his preoccupation with art history, sculpture’s cultural legacy and its links to popular culture.
Working with steel, fibreglass, aluminium and ceramics, Evans’ work in part explores the abstraction of figurative forms and their resolution in anthropomorphic states, a method most common in
JESSICA
By Baillie and Sturrock ‘ ‘ ‘ i ’ ' ’
Visual Art
postwar avant-garde sculpture. His work simultaneously references the future and the past. ‘Memorials to the Closed System Schematic’, exhibited at Tate St Ives echoes Bernar Venet’s work, while embracing pop culture references that play a great roll in stressing the work’s relevance in relation to the survival of contemporary sculpture.
Historically, St Ives’ has a strong association with British sculpture - Barbara Hepworth and Roger Hilton are synonymous with the region. Working in the shadows of these artists has definitely enriched Evans’ practice and given him the opportunity and confidence to embrace new techniques and approaches. With these experiences in mind there is no doubt that this exhibition will include some of his most interesting work to date. (Steven Cairns)
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15 Feb—1 Mar 2007 THE LIST 91