Visual Art
REVIEW GROUP SHOW VOTIVE CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 30 Jan ●●●●●
Curated by Sarah Lowndes, Votive offers a well considered exhibition showcasing the works of international artists George Brecht, Chris Burden, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Thea Djordjadze, Torsten Lauschmann and Richard Wright. It also includes artefacts from the world cultures collection of Glasgow Museums and a recorded performance by Basque singer Nerea Bello. The image of the votive offering – an object placed in a sacred space for ritual purposes – encapsulates the idea of object as event, and this exhibition takes its lead from the seminal Chair Event in 1969 by Fluxus artist George Brecht. ‘Every event is an object anyway and every event has object-like quality,’ said Brecht, who died last year and whose work has rarely been seen in Scotland. Also addressing this idea of performativity is the
documentation of endurance artist Chris Burden’s 1972 performance ‘Bed Piece’ where he remained in bed for 22 days.
Both sculptural and performative, Torsten Lauschmann’s film installation ‘Dead Man’s Switch’
projects a moving still life of a burning candle onto the wall. As the flame gutters and blows out, the event continues in another dimension. Both a nod to lighting candles as an act of invocation and to Gerhard Richter’s painting ‘Kerze’, this work brings together the old and the new, extending the tension between the real and the static.
Turner Prize winner Richard Wright, whose work is
meticulous and labour intensive, has made painstaking wall drawings on the far back wall of the CCA ‘chapel’. Here too the act of making is a sculptural event as the artist responds to the site-specific architectural conditions. Alluding to amulets and talismans, the objects in this
exhibition work a certain kind of magic. In an attempt not to take for granted the history of the last century of Western art, but rather to revisit ideas and play with questions that have not yet fully been answered (and this is why people still make art), the objects work together to transcend that philosophical, intellectual and even poetic explanation of what is on display. It is open ended, but covers all corners; it is disconcerting, yet compelling; and it is truly beautiful as it puts us at ease while it supersedes its own premise. (Talitha Kotzé)
www.list.co.uk/visualart
REVIEW MIXED MEDIA ELIN JAKOBSDÓTTIR: HINGES BETWEEN DAYS Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 14 Mar ●●●●●
Various attempts to render the familiar strange are assembled here. Icelandic artist Jakobsdóttir has a knack for styling, and it’s the fastidious nature of these works that sets about a methodical dismantling of fiction from fact. A displayed wooden box, for example, re-appears in a film – is it a prop or a documented object? Pairings, perspectives, scales and
viewpoints are scrupulously switched in 16mm film ‘Horsebox’. Simultaneously evoking and undermining the idea of utilitarianism, the seemingly instructional film documents two dungaree-clad men as they build the strange titular box, identical to the plywood structure exhibited. The men carry it through Berlin, oblivious to the glaring futility of the process. Slips in reason are heightened by an awareness of the central prop in the gallery space; its dull aesthetic jars with the increasingly surreal postures of the men.
‘Two-Sided Table’, an object
reminiscent of old double-sided library desks, in which the divider has been replaced with an intricate latticework of paper, is refracted by ‘Worktable’, a film presented upon a floor-mounted wooden screen. Synchronised upon its obverse, screens ‘Worktable 2’. It seems Jakobsdóttir has created a hall of mirrors, but workaday, and without the shine. These works provoke a double take, and when you look at them you draw imaginary connections – a penny-drop process that makes you feel pretty good. (Rosalie Doubal)
REVIEW PRINTS GARRY FABIAN MILLER: THE COLOURS Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 30 Jan ●●●●●
Garry Fabian Miller has received acclaim for his investigations into the possibilities of camera-less photography, reducing his art to explorations of the interaction of light and light-sensitive paper. Working with filters, liquids and frames, Miller’s one- off prints reduce light and colour into bright, bold images. Great pleasure is found in the knowledge and consideration of the artist’s process. These prints spark notions of essence, value and alchemy – terms associated with the history of photography’s science, that have been coined in the face of the digital age.
Alongside a selection of small-scale works from series’ Year One and Year Two –
a pattern book of experimental prints produced methodically over two years of intense studio-based practice – are a selection of new works that embrace digital processes. Continuing his play with light in the darkroom, Miller now complements the intense nature of this elemental source by scanning the images, and utilising current printing technologies. It is therefore an intriguing meld of the old with the new that has produced these bright lacquered images. Trapped beneath veneers of Perspex, these deep, vast pools of colour take on a strange, almost sculptural quality unbeknown to their Cibachrome ancestors. Although this is an exhibition for those with an interest in process and the history of photography, Miller’s tentative digital advances also bring issues regarding finite materials and obsolete technologies, sharply into focus. (Rosalie Doubal)
96 THE LIST 17 Dec 2009–7 Jan 2010
Y R E L L A G Y B E L G N
I /
I
T S T R A E H T Y S E T R U O C E G A M
I