* I Festival Visual Art
ALEXANDER HEIM: DOVES
Harnessing pigeon power 000
Lyrical and sophisticated, young German artist Alexander Heim’s first solo UK show exhibits a fascinating lightness of touch. Doves pivots around a video of pigeons at a London Costa Coffee branch. Exquisitely-composed photographs of fragments of pavement and large, cave-like papier-maché sculptures are presented as artistic offspring of the video. Heim’s use of multi-media sounds overwhelming, but it’s not: it awakens in the viewer an appetite for more, for further forms.
Heim’s works do not glorify the pigeons, or project onto them. At most, the birds appear as subjects in their own right; it’s an honour not often bestowed on flying vermin. With his choice of exhibition title and subject, Heim tells a tragic tale of two birds from the same family, playing with the lyrical, snow-white and peaceful iconography of the dove, holding it in contrast to its wild, mucky relative, the scourge of inner-city life. This narrative doesn’t remain the central intrigue, however; Heim’s works are animated most prominently by a strange nostalgia for modernist forms. Looking for the beautiful in the everyday, using the documenting camera to artful ends and taking interest in primal and archaic forms were all modernist occupations, and, cheeky references to the coffee chain aside, Heim’s works appear to be haunted by his post-war predecessors. Doves is not about transforming the quotidian, though; his pigeons remain pigeons, a fragile, yet tangible nod to the obsolete ideals of modernism, and a noteworthy use of understatement among the brasher, bolder shows and showcases of the festival. (Rosalie Doubal)
I Doggerfisher, 558 7 7 70, until 73 Sep. Tue-Fri lOam—6pm (Sat noon—5pm), free.
CHAD MCCAIL .
Puberty, print, perversion and compulsory education 000
What a remarkable and strange artist Chad McCail is. By his own admission half of his Output tends to be peopled by ‘robots. zombies or wealthy parasites'. while the other half looks like loose leaves from a particularly perverse Ladybird book. Both sides of McCail's work are in evidence in this funny. clever. technically accomplished. but badly hung show.
On the ground floor. McCall's inspired art strip Compulsory Education. a bizarre robot-zombie-parasite histOry lesson on European academia. tries to dominate the room but is lost in a scrum of prints for sale. This has a devaluing affect on the other great piece in the room - Relationships Grow Stronger, an eerie familial scene suggesting puberty. tradition and celebration (with McCall's now familiar penis tree on a cart).
Upstairs the layOut is a lot better. Divided into two rooms. the first space houses McCall's Puberty series of prints (all made in collaboration with this workshop). With these McCall tackles the thorny issue of sex education as if he were illustrating a bad language book with unsettling and hilarious effect. In the final roon'. Dream Genital reverts us back to McCail's more degenerate meditations with a riff on the Adam and Eve myth and David lcke's lizard people. An informative film and a A reading table are also in this room. With his flat intricate illustrations. McCall clearly THE EMBASSY: MUTATIS MUTANDIS responds well to this way of working. Long may it continue. (Paul Dale) Good work bad Show ..
I Edinburgh Printmakers, 557 24 79. until 6 Sep, free. McCall Will discuss the works ’ 77 ~ - ~ a r in this exhibition in a free talk on Sat 23 Aug. Places limited. book now. When the Embassy emerged several years ago. it was as a playful. bright-eyed young gallery with a serious interest in art. as demonstrated by the strong exhibition programme. It seemed as though Edinburgh was finally going to get an g .. , .. g I 7‘2” ambitious artist-run initiative that could be successfully sustained in the long term. . 5' :,j,;.;,;im,.g;.-i jg, The Embassy's still going. but is it still going strong? Due to the loss of the j ,‘ - '- I 'i - gallery. the venue is temporarily operating out of a small space at Edinburgh '. ' u ' ' 15E ' t ' College of Art. In actual fact. it's less a space. more a room and a corridor — not ‘ ' ' {if an ideal place to hold an exhibition. unless you're a very canny curator. Sadly. ‘Mutatis Mutandis‘ has not had enough attention paid to it to enable the exhibition to work.
Essentially a traditional group show deSpite its ambitious-sounding statement. the exhibition does contain some interesting artwork: paintings by Hirofumi Suda, a text piece by Yason Banal and David Sherry's work stand out. However. the links between the works seem tenuous. there is no information about the individual pieces. while the map of the exhibition is confusing and possibly inaccurate (is a video work featuring Sherry really by Eleanor Antin?) and there's no one invigilating who can help.
The artists‘ work isn't really the problem here — even the exhibition's concept might be further developed via the associated series of performances — but the sloppy execution is unforgivable. Have a heart Embassy — your artists. and your public deserve better than this. (Liz Shannon)
I The Embassy Annex at Edinburgh College of Art, 227 6000. until 37 Aug, daily loam-6pm, free.
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21 Aug—4 Sep 2008 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 105