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Visual Art

PREVIEW PERFORMANCE

THREE BLOWS

St Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 5 & Sun 6 Jul

As the oldest purpose-built concert hall in Scotland. St Cecilia's Hall is in possession of unique acoustic properties. St Cecilia. of course. was the patron saint of church music. whose executioner failed to fully sever her head. even after three attempts. Inspired by both. producer Katie Nicoll and curator Sarah Lowndes have concocted a weekend of live music performed by practitioners rooted in visual art. and which takes full advantage of its setting with a similarly three-pronged approach.

Where ‘For The Voice' allows vocal - based artists such as Richard Youngs and Correcto to explore a song-based approach, ‘Imaginary Landscape' will be headlined by improv veteran Keith Rowe. The third strand. ‘Thinking Music' will offer guided tours of St Cecilia's instrument collection as well as a discussion programme.

‘This is the first time I know of that the space has been used for contemporary music.‘ says Lowndes. ‘This has been a challenge for all the artists. who are more used to playing with amplification. But with such a rich, reverberant space. using a PA would be a total disaster. Most of the people performing have already collaborated in some way. and are creating something brand new. It's all pared down. which. in an age where things can be over-produced. makes it even more special.‘

A major coup for the exhibition is the appearance of Mayo Thompson, mainstay of legendary Texan-born band. The Red Krayola.

‘Mayo is such a seminal figure.‘ Lowndes points out. 'Both him and Keith Rowe are from the same generation. and that should make for a fascinating dialogue.‘ (Neil Cooper)

REVIEW MIXED MEDIA

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National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 21 Sep .0.

Any exhibition that begins with an Ashkenazi Jewish songwriter (Irving Berlin) and ends with a sloaney celebrity culture muse (Diana, Princess of Wales) is worth a peek. Following New York magazine Vanity Fair’s trajectory from the Algonquin Hotel’s Round Table through the Jazz age to its closure and 1983 resurrection, this exhibition brings to mind Norma Desmond’s assertion in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard that, ‘I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.’

Gloria Swanson, who played Desmond, and Wilder are both represented here, albeit on opposite sides of the Vanity Fair abyss. Edward Streichan’s beautiful 1924 portrait of Swanson (pictured) evokes a type of surrealism then being championed in photographic portraiture by Man Ray and Maya Deren. Wilder, meanwhile, is represented in Helmut Newton’s mildly suggestive 1985 portrait of the director and his wife.

These portraits and many others in this bewilderineg cluttered exhibition highlight the dichotomies and

MLADEN STILINOVIC: ON MONEY, ZEROES, ETC

CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 19 Jul 0000

According to the Croatian artist Mladen Stilinovic, there is no art without laziness. » A series of photographs entitled ‘Artist at Work' shows his theory in action:

Stilinovic lying in bed. looking melancholy or facing the wall. But ‘lazy‘ artists are not necessarily unproductive or uninspiring. as this exhibition demonstrates.

Dating from the 19708 to the present day. Stilinovic‘s art reflects his life growing up under Tito's socialist regime in the former Yugoslavia. now independent.

capitalist Croatia. This massive shift in political ideology is integral to the artist's work. Some of his ideas are pretty blunt: to enter the gallery you must step over

coins scattered on the floor. while banknotes dangle from the ceiling and cast

playful shadows on the wall.

Stilinovic displays an expert use of slogans and visual references. His works feature imagery drawn from the art of the radical Left. including Soviet design's

use of motif and colour (particularly revolutionary red and black), alongside the dynamic abstraction of Malevich and the Constructivists art created for the ' regime. but ultimately outlawed. While these themes could be viewed as

hackneyed. particularly in works featuring banknotes from the former Yugoslavia,

and American dollar bills. they in fact offer a true insight into our relationship with : money. This is the best kind of political art. emerging out of a lived experience and

provoking wider questions that are still relevant today. (Liz Shannon) l.

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disappointments at the heart of any kind of progress. Small, intense but compulsive photographs of iconic talents such as HG Wells, Thomas Hardy and dancer Bronislava Nijinska (fearsomer caught by Man Ray in full war paint in 1922) ultimately give way to Nan Goldin, Herb Ritts, David LaChapelle and, worst of all, Mario Testino’s indulgent US boomtime monstrosities.

There is, of course, amazing work here from both periods in Vanity Fair’s broken history. Lusha Nelson’s portrait of Peter Lorre excites in the same way his eerie child killer performance does in Fritz Lang’s M, while portraits of black US Marxist crooner and actor Paul Robeson and musician Louis Armstrong catch the first growth spurts of the US’ civil rights movement.

Of the newer portraits, Dafydd Jones’ 1997 picture of Mick Jagger, Madonna and Tony Curtis, and Annie Leibovitz’s stunning 1995 picture of a bedraggled Robert Mitchum certainly bring home the grief and horror of life lived in the flashbulb. Elsewhere, it’s difficult to care. So what if Hilary Swank has the body of an Olympian or that Julianne Moore can be CGl-ed into a Rubensesque tableau? If nothing else this exhibition highlights the passing truths endemic in all photography. (Paul Dale)

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3—1 7 Jul 2008 THE LIST 95