www.list.co.uk/visualart
REVIEW FILM & SOUND LUKE FOWLER: A GRAMMAR FOR LISTENING (PARTS 1-3) The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 30 Jan ●●●●●
Luke Fowler – in collaboration with Eric La Casa, Lee Patterson and Toshiya Tsunoda – creates field recordings that question how to develop new dialogues between looking and listening. The artist responds to pivotal moments in the history of Western culture’s classification of noise, music and everyday sounds: John Cage’s 4’33’’, silence used in experimental films of the 1960s, and Peter Schaeffer’s ‘found sounds’ and the concept of ‘acousmatic’ (reduced listening) where sounds were stripped of instrumental and cultural contexts in order to develop a language of intonation. Fowler presents film and audio
recordings that have been edited to create symphonies of everyday sound. We are reminded of Andrea Arnold’s films, but instead of captivating us visually, Fowler’s euphony evokes an emotional response purely through sound and the acoustic structure that governs these compositions. In one stanza we see a found object
amplified by contact microphones, producing harmonic overtones through electro-magnetic springs – apparently from a discarded lighter – and we are transfixed as if sound has just slowed down and met its visual counterpart.
Without slipping into the potential pitfall of pretentiousness, the works have been installed with careful consideration, and we are presented with a beautifully raw, yet powerful aural and visual feast. (Talitha Kotzé)
Visual Art
REVIEW FOUND ART & SCULPTURE ANNA SIKORSKA: EXCHANGE AND HARBOUR Corn Exchange Gallery, Edinburgh, until Thu 17 Dec ●●●●●
It was a while ago now that the European surrealists first became drawn to the marvel of surprise juxtapositions. Lautréamont’s poetic proclamation about the chance meeting on a dissecting table of an umbrella with a sewing machine, sparked something pretty special. Theirs was a time (the early 1920s) that saw the dawn of the found object – Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ – and the foregrounding of the creative capacity of the unconscious. A current student at the Royal College of Art, Anna Sikorska’s oneiric exhibition, Exchange and Harbour, is a simple four-part affair combining ready-mades with sculptural works, which can be seen as characterising a now common resurgence in a similarly optimistic type of creative playfulness. Her works mark a turn away from the rigours of theory
and sardonic comment, instead ushering in a welcome concentration on themes of narrative, everyday experience and the diverse possibilities of the physical. The show comprises an orange sail, a dishwashing tub fashioned into a miniature swimming pool, a bold expanse of pink and a sculpture that looks like an over-sized clothesbasket. Like the shrunken and outsized remnants of a dream remembered, Sikorska’s gentle juxtapositions rub and jar with our usual associations. The show is accompanied by a quote from the novelist AS Byatt. She writes of the brilliant patterns fairytales offer of ‘isolated things and materials’.
‘It is a mosaic world,’ Byatt continues, ‘capable of endless retelling in varied ways.’ The use of found objects to toy with readymade associations may be an old idea, but it’s a good one, and it lends great weight to this fairly minimal exhibition. (Rosalie Doubal)
REVIEW PRINTS, DRAWINGS & PAINTINGS THE COLLECTOR’S ART The Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 9 Jan ●●●●●
This exhibition showcases works from two private collections featuring prints, drawings and paintings of British and German art of the late 19th and 20th centuries, including works by Joan Eardley, JD Fergusson, Ian Fleming, Emil Orlik, Barbara Rae and Frances Walker. Divided into two sections, each collection takes on a unique quality and speaks of its collector. These selections have not been chosen from a wide pool of works by a curator, but rather through a set of personal choices, tastes and motives. In a small accompanying catalogue each collector gives a personal account of how they started acquiring works and how their collections were built up. They explain how they go about collecting and because they decided to stay anonymous it provides a certain prompt for the viewer to ponder what it means to be a collector.
Varying in styles from Scottish landscapes to German Expressionism, treats include work by Max Pechstein, Max Beckmann and Käthé Kollwitz. In Kollwitz’ striking etching Downtrodden Family, dated 1900, a family of three is portrayed huddled together. The father is hiding his face whilst holding out a noose to his wife who in turn is looking down at their young child’s fragile, lifeless yet angelic face between the mother’s hands. Kollwitz found her subject matter in the compelling lives of Berlin’s proletariat. This eclectic salon-style show is bound to have something that tickles your fancy. (Talitha Kotzé)
19 Nov–3 Dec 2009 THE LIST 89