Visual Art
REVIEW GROUP SHOW
RECORDS PLAYED BACKWARDS
The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 10 May 0...
Just like the teenager in the 805 playing his or her Iron Maiden records in reverse while hoping to hear Satanic messages, the artists in this group exhibition busy themselves trying to find possibly absent meaning within the margins of the media. Like Matias Faldbakken, whose ‘Newspaper Ad #19’ blows the blank space where an advert should have been placed on a newspaper page up to wall-sized scale. Or Michael S Riedel, who has reprinted an edition of Frieze magazine four times, each in only one of the four essential colours of printing. The result is an oddly- designed single colour scrapbook whose context is more or less arbitrary.
William E Jones’ film montages reference Peter Roehr, the German artist of the 19605 who spliced some few-second clips from TV commercials into infuriating loops which served to dismantle the film’s original meaning. Jones, impudently, has substituted placid commercials for homosexual porn, and images of such sexual frankness aren’t as easy to completely decontextualise.
Anne Collier, meanwhile, is a fan of comparative photographic diptychs, and the most instantly striking of her two pieces is ‘Woman with Cameras', in which two German photographic hobby magazines of the 19705 are rephotographed next to each other. One cover features a model adorned tackily in denim, the other a frontally naked woman; the presence of photographic equipment in each image is there to be laughed at and recoiled from in turn, thanks to the sense of vacuous period affrontery.
It’s an amusing show, although arcth so, curator Daniel Baumann has picked a selection of strongly conceptual works whose joke often remains well hidden. Explanation is required, for example, in the case of Celine Duval’s ‘Horizons IV’, a touching home video made of private photographs the artist has bought from persons unknown. Patience is needed with Seth Price’s ‘Longwall’, huge rolls of wall-mounted paper which discourse on video game soundtracks and long-forgotten pop music genres as though they were topics worthy of scientific evaluation. Often you might feel just like that kid with the backwards record, although the devil in each of these works will eventually make its voice heard. (David Pollock)
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104 THE LIST 8—22 May 2008
M M A A MAN
MEMPHIS
REVIEW INSTALLATION. SCULPTURE. PAINTING JONATHAN MO K Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 18 May 00.
‘Something No Less Important Than Nothing' and 'Nothing No Less Important Than Something' are the first Scottish shows by Jonathan Monk in a decade. though actually it's the same exhibition but with two titles. It is also a chance to reappraise the work of an unsung Glasgow School of Art graduate. a conceptualist contemporary of David Shrigley and Douglas Gordon who now lives and works in Berlin.
The old tramlines which carve up the floor of the Traiiiway's main gallery space have been lined with gold leaf by the artist. This piece. entitled ‘Golden Lights Displaying Your Name', seems mainly inspired by a wish to tamper with the building's interior. although Monk‘s desire to make a virtue of obsolescence is reflected in this work. “Another Fine Mess Repeated is a case in point - one plinth bears a projector showing the titular Laurel and Hardy film. another a record player whose soundtrack the viewer can alter. There's Abba and Neil Sedaka. dated artists played on an outmoded format, to soundtrack a film made with obsolete technology. Yet still something new has been created.
A centrepiece of the show is the full drum-kit in the middle of the room, another interactive piece with a film of a big band musical playing behind the stool. Out of view of the drummer. This is another familiar theme of Monk's work, throwing definable reality and the abstraction of remembered experience together. Not all of his pieces work quite so well, but there’s an endearing sense of playfulness and a willingness to involve the viewer. (David Pollock)
REVIEW PERFORMANCE AND INSTALLATION
MELANIE GILLIGAN
Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 10 May 000
This exhibition by London-based artist and writer Melanie Gilligan takes place not in the usual Transmission gallery. but in an upper Wasps studio space opposite. The decision for this seems partly to be an atmospheric one; the exhibition attempts to create confusion and dislocation so for visitors to enter a cage lift and be transported into a huge dusty room is perhaps a better place to start than the more conventional space opposite. Another reason seems to be a desire to create an ongoing ’work in progress“ feel and where better than an artist's studio to do this? Gilligan has created this mood by scattering strange and broken objects. allegedly from ‘the Renaissance to the 18th century'. around the space. Most are two dimenSional drawings. paintings or photocopies of drawings in strange. cheap frames. some on stands. others hanging precariously from the ceiling at head height.
Elsewhere. broken plaster figurines lie discarded on the floor along with other more modern found objects. In the midst of all this. two camps have been set up. ready for an impending exhibition. Performances take place eveny hour. demonstrating the importance of the performance to the overall exhibition experience. To begin With Gilligan sits at a desk with a laptop and recounts a story about a writing commissmn and the impossible guest to write something original, until she enc0unters a mysterious medieval room in a New York gallery where the odd objects begin to provide inspiration. Then. across the room writer Dan Berchenko plays the rather cliched angst-ridden struggling artist where he. too. is searching for originality. Expressionism, Pop Art. Minimalism . . . there's too much history!' he shouts into his empty easel.
There is an attempt here to grapple With what comes next for artists after the free-for-all postmodern approach to art. addressed in more detail in two essays accompanying the show. Clearly there are no obvious solutions. and the unanswered questions ariSing from the performances and the essays are perplexing. But the strongest aspects of this exhibition. perhaps prowding SOme answers. are found in Gilligan and Berchenko's honest and direct performances. (Rosie Lesso)