Visual Art
REVIEW DRAWING, PAINTING AND SCULPTURE CHARLES AVERY, THE ISLANDERS: AN INTRODUCTION Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Sun 15 Feb ●●●●●
In 2004 artist Charles Avery began charting the creatures, topology and cosmology of an imaginary island. This exhibition presents his endeavours to date: a collection of drawings, narratives, sculptures and installations that creates an artistic territorialisation of a fabricated land. Avery’s isle accommodates a host of witty philosophical propositions and conundrums. Neither worthy nor drily didactic, these intellectual conceits simply revel in the topographic impulse, while the skilled draughtsmanship on display here roots otherwise academic concerns firmly within an artistic realm.
The exhibition is playful from the outset. Avery’s ‘Eternity Chamber’ greets the visitor. A tall hexagonal TARDIS-like structure capped by a mighty steel gull, its chained door remains slightly ajar, revealing tessellated
flooring, mirrored walls and an endlessly reflective interior. The chamber pops up in other works and it slowly becomes apparent that it is an artefact of mythological import: designed to emulate longevity, the chamber belongs to a small fraction of the Isle’s residents. And so the culture, beliefs, habits and addictions of a
caste nation are gradually unravelled. Avery invents and charts a people hooked on gin-pickled eggs, hybrid beasts, God-S-Hites, and Gods that include Mr Impossible, a 33-year-old man elevated to his new title mistakenly by three drunken philosophers. Hemmed in by ‘The Sea of Clarity’, ‘Cape Conchious-ness’ and the ‘Analitic Ocean’, and immortalised in consummate drawings, uncanny acts of taxidermy and iconic sculptures, the characters displayed here make for an intriguing introduction to Avery’s unique oeuvre. As visually arresting as it is fantastically provocative, this exhibition is already a landmark in contemporary Scottish art. (Rosalie Doubal)
REVIEW PAINTING AND DRAWING ALASDAIR GRAY & ALASDAIR TAYLOR: THE TWO ALASDAIRS Mackintosh Gallery, Glasgow School of Art, until Sat 10 Jan ●●●●●
Underrated for many years, Alasdair Gray is now rightly hailed as an artist of note. This exhibition will bring him further plaudits, but what about the other Alasdair of the show’s title?
Alasdair Taylor, who died in 2007, was Gray’s equally talented friend at Glasgow School of Art. As the exhibition demonstrates, the pair did not share an aesthetic. Indeed, Gray’s ‘The Two Alasdairs’, a beautifully economical pen and ink drawing of himself and his friend, is stylistically light years away from Taylor’s work. Inspired by Abstract Expressionism
and COBRA, among others, Taylor executed large-scale oil paintings as well as smaller assemblages. The gallery space has been roughly divided between the two men, and the contrast between Gray’s early painting, ‘Three People Setting a Table’, and Taylor’s pop-influenced works from 1970 is startling.
This exhibition provides a taste of Taylor’s art, but also shows that he deserves a space entirely his own. It’s hard to follow the links from his early self-portrait, featuring such thick impasto that it is more a sculpture than a painting, through to his collage works with their bright, straight-from- the-tube dashes of abstract colour and snippets of text. A dedicated exhibition would allow the viewer to join the dots. (Liz Shannon)
REVIEW SCULPTURE AND MIXED MEDIA EVA ROTHSCHILD The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Fri 19 Dec ●●●●●
You may experience a frisson of excitement upon entering Eva Rothschild’s exhibition at the Modern Institute. At first glance, it may seem that you’ve stumbled into a weird S&M jungle. Specially conceived with the space in mind, ‘Supernature’ is a sleek sculptural installation that divides the front gallery into four discreet sections. The sculpture is reflected back on itself, if slightly distorted, by a wall of glistening black perspex. Black and shining with gloss paint, the sculpture’s frame is explicitly Modernist in appearance, but its angularity is tempered by snake-like forms that coil around the work. Hand-woven from strips of leather, these uncanny objects simultaneously recall snakes, whips and jungle vines. A smaller sculptural work is hemmed in to one side. Balanced on a double plinth
constructed from sleek black tiles, the piece is capped by a white ‘molecule’ of plaster, bandages and multicoloured dashes of spraypaint. Its disjunctive, handmade appearance sits oddly within the installation as a whole, undermining the sleek modernism of first impressions. ‘Rotten Apple’, a large floor-based sculpture, is again constructed from black
tiles. Gaping holes allow the viewer to see into the hollow centre of the piece, out of which emerges a green-and-black striped metal ‘sapling’. These incongruities are intriguing, neatly linking back to the more-than-nature concept established in the first room, and reinforcing a potential Biblical interpretation. If you like your sculpture gutsy and assured, this show is well worth seeing. (Liz Shannon)
104 THE LIST 11 Dec 2008–8 Jan 2009