LIST.CO.UK/FESTIVAL
TAMSYN CHALLENGER: 400 WOMEN Timely memorial to victims of gender violence ●●●●●
What unites the collection of heterogeneous portraits in 400 Women is the fate of each subject depicted. All are the victims of rape, abduction and murder, devastating crimes which have taken place in the Mexican border region of Ciudad Juàrez.
In direct opposition to the passive acknowledgement of these crimes by the region’s authorities, who consistently issue a generic statistic of 400 deaths per year to ‘record’ this gender persecution, Tamsyn Challenger’s intervention on Canongate is sensitively constructed, taking each of the women into account. The project atomises the government’s anonymous
approach. Through collaboration with Amnesty International, the victim’s families and the 175 artists Challenger has so far commissioned to produce an artistic memorial in their honour, she manages to reinstate the women’s formerly lost individual identity. The subsequent portraits are then installed alongside one another, this time in a collective that symbolises resistance and strength. Every woman has gained a voice in this project and
her image is transformed.
The postcards desperately thrust into Challenger’s hands by the victim’s families are the starting point for painterly works influenced by the art-historical canon and carefully constructed according to each woman’s story.
Canongate Venture, the deteriorating school that they are currently grouped within, instils further poignant, symbolic layers. Paint crumbles from the walls, ceilings have fallen in and dirt is scattered over the carpet. The damage highlights and emphasises the destructive violence endured by the women that peer out from the walls.
The works are not hung to correlate with the order in the accompanying pamphlet so viewing the exhibition becomes a search for the missing once again. Yet, unlike in reality, when they are eventually found the viewer is confronted with a message of hope. For what is encountered is the memory of a woman who shall no longer be forgotten. To be aware of these past crimes is to move closer to their future end. (Rachael Cloughton) ■ Canongate Venture, 07870 935442, until 4 Sep (not Mon), free.
DAVID MACH: PRECIOUS LIGHT Exhibition of biblical proportions ●●●●●
Methil-born artist David Mach’s work ‘Golgotha’ will stand out as the defining image from this year’s EAF. Three enormous figures of threaded steel nailed to metallic crosses, which take up the entire ground floor of the newly refurbished City Art Centre, they recast the crucifiction as a strikingly modernist monument and an otherworldly tableau of religious art.
Although it’s subtitled ‘King James Bible, a Celebration, 1611- 2011’, it’s hard to tell where reverence and parody diverge in this epic exhibition. A similar cruciform mounted in the escalator well, for example, is titled ‘Die Harder’, while the large-scale photographic collages, which comprise most of the show, are laden with the visual weight of a Hollywood movie. In these often stunning narrative pieces, ‘Noah’s Ark’ is a timber frame mounted on Salisbury Crags; ‘The Nativity’ occurred in a post- apocalyptic shack made of telegraph poles and upturned cars, and ‘The Destruction of Jericho’ is viewed from the inside of a family people carrier as if it were a scene from Cloverfield.
Although this is superficially a bright and modern update of unfashionable religious art, there are also deeper contexts and meanings to be found. In ‘The Resurrection’, for example, a pair of holed and bloody feet shuffle through a trash-strewn dump, a possible commentary on the wastelands of consumerist outflow left behind in countries where religious feeling remains most powerful. (David Pollock) ■ City Art Centre, 529 3993, until 16 Oct, £5 (£3).
Reviews {VISUAL ART}
KATRI WALKER: NORTH WEST Intriguing exploration of Scottish/Wild West links ●●●●●
This triptych of work by Edinburgh- born artist Katri Walker recasts the landscape of Scotland as the wilderness of the American old west, quite literally in the case of the titular central work. Projected over three connected screens, the rocky cliffs and plains of Assynt are recast in ‘North West’ as an undiscovered prairie promising exploration and adventure simply through their widescreen cinematic presentation. In the context of the rest of the exhibition, we consider the Scots who settled in America in its early years and their reaction to the arid landscapes of the Midwest compared to the grassy glens of their home country: a lone sheep on a hilltop in ‘North West’ echoes the desolation of the Highlands post Clearances. Elsewhere, the perspective of America from Scotland is brought up
to date and focused quite precisely through the lens of half a century of Hollywood interpretation. In the film ‘The Making of Three Guns for a Killing’ a group of enthusiasts are filmed making a low-budget home movie in one of their Aberdeen gardens, amidst a custom-built Western town set called ‘Tranquility City’. Their enthusiasm is endearing, their accents earnestly mid-Atlantic, the tropes they use – dirty leather dusters, low-slung six-shooter belts, grizzled verbal drawling – studiedly culled from the films of John Wayne and John Ford.
As in the photographic portrait ‘Pipe Major Wyatt Earp’, a kilt-wearing piper whose huge moustache echoes that of Earp on his tattooed upper arm, this work reflects historical representations of both countries that are largely constructed, yet enduringly ‘real’ through the repetition of cultural narratives. The idea is intriguing, yet the subject feels only partially explored here. (David Pollock) ■ The Old Ambulance Depot, 77 Brunswick Depot, until 4 Sep (not Sun/Mon), free. 11–18 Aug 2011 THE LIST 87
F E S T I V A L