VisualArt
GRASSROOTS WORK EDINBURGH ANNUALE Various venues, Edinburgh, until Sun 24 Jun ●●●●●
In terms of how art happens at a grassroots level, both Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government are as clueless as each other. The importance of Edinburgh Annuale to the city’s independent artistic infrastructure, on the other hand, cannot be overstated.
This year’s edition features some 30-odd events in co-operatively run spaces such as Embassy, Rhubaba, the Old Ambulance Station, Superclub and Whitespace, as well as an ever-burgeoning network of flats, shops, tunnels and lecture theatres, plus online exhibitions and publications, one of which glories in the name, Jelly and ice cream when Thatcher dies? All of which, under the Scottish Government’s idiotic changes to Public Entertainment Licence laws, are technically illegal.
But no matter, at least there’s still music. Or is there?
Because, while the 24 12” square LP record covers lined up in long-standing indie emporium Avalanche Records blend in perfectly with the racks around them, look closer and each is actually a meticulously observed depiction of crucial albums that lay unreleased by bands that never were. While one can easily imagine the stack-heeled glam racket of Douglas Morland’s glitter-spattered Three Day Week, Ian Smith’s A Spoonful of Sugar casts Situationist stooge Monty Cantsin as a spoon-playing showman covering ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘I Kissed A Girl’. Elsewhere, Optimo’s Jonnie Wilkes pastiches the über-exclusivity of micro-label limited edition presses by way of a make-believe compilation of East European electronica.
With an accompanying biography for each bespoke artiste,
all this resembles Bill Drummond and Mark Manning’s release of a set of 7” singles by non-existent Scandinavian acts, all recorded by themselves. Wannabe soulster Mingering Mike, meanwhile, mapped out a whole make-believe career for himself via a series of hand-drawn album covers with accompanying cardboard discs that were discovered en masse in a car-boot sale. As a soundtrack to imaginary times, it’s silent but deadly. (Neil Cooper)
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REVIEW DRAWING A PARLIAMENT OF LINES City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sun 8 Jul ●●●●●
This group show curated by Euan Gray explores the very definition of drawing and its boundaries with other disciplines, successfully bringing together a diverse body of work by 15 contemporary artists connected to Scotland. Works by artists including David Shrigley, Callum Innes and Charles Avery are based loosely around five themes – figuration; abstraction; landscape; sculptural investigation and film; photography and reproduction – coherently articulating the diversity of drawing as an art form and its relevance to a range of contemporary artists. What is clear from this engaging exhibition is not
only the importance of drawing to all areas of current art practice, but also how it continues to remain relevant while adapting and evolving in relation to developments in technology and media. As the show highlights, drawing is perhaps more relevant in a digital age than ever before: Layla Curtis’ Edinburgh and Glasgow Index Drawings demonstrating that, even in a time when we are exposed to and familiar with a proliferation of information and images on the internet, drawing still has the capacity to illuminate and surprise. (Rhona Taylor)
120 THE LIST 21 Jun–19 Jul 2012
REVIEW PAINTING LOTTE GERTZ: NEW WORK Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 4 Aug ●●●●●
New Work by Lotte Gertz is a surprisingly beautiful, yet unassuming exhibition. Murky shades of green, grey and blue paint have been pushed and swirled around the canvases. Traces of a second layer appear visible through the cloth – revealing a painterly history of mark making that is in a constant flux between advancing and receding.
A large white muslin canvas with minimal grey marks anchors the show that is otherwise reflective of a busy mind trying to streamline her consciousness. Gertz’s hand stitched canvases, made from thin, pure white, almost rationed, muslin cloth, give value to the work that would otherwise have been cheapened by readymade shop canvas. There is a formlessness here, similar to a baby’s perspective of the world as it develops sharpened vision. Gertz’s act of painting can be likened to becoming a surrogate vessel for another life as autonomous mark making allows the subconscious to control the hand to paint or draw, giving weight to the process rather than the product. When the child takes over the mother may allow it to play and mess, and in that moment a profound image can take shape. (Talitha Kotzé)
REVIEW FILM LIS RHODES: DISSONANCE AND DISTURBANCE Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 24 Jun ●●●●●
‘It is dangerous to step out of line – and lethal not to,’ declared Lis Rhodes, British filmmaker and artist, whose work is political, feminist, visually rich and powerfully poetic.
Tramway showcases a cross section of her films from the last four decades. Dresden Dynamo from 1972 is a wonderfully rich archetypal ocular pleasure feast, a psychedelic trip of a film. No camera was used, instead marks were made directly onto the film, and the optical track mechanically reads a sound in response. This is used to make a material connection between seeing and hearing, inducing for the viewer a hypnotic state of visual indulgence. Rhodes’ work is cerebral but the strong, sensuous,
yet compelling nature of the visual counterpoints this beautifully. In a two-screen presentation, films from different periods are brought together to form a diptych with overlayed sound. Collaged images build a slow moving visceral field of political events and colourscapes. A post-apocalyptic narration binds the two films together. The feminine third person could quite aptly refer to the eternally afflicted but enduring feminine, to mother earth. (Talitha Kotzé)