VISUAL ART list.co.uk/visualart
HITLIST THE BEST EXHIBITIONS
✽ Stephen Sutcliffe: Outwork The Glasgow video artist’s most ambitious
show to date, featuring his film collages and using snippets from British television, film clips and archive audio to playfully comment on our notions of class and culture. See review, left. Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 30 Jun.
✽ Gary Fabian Miller: The Middle Place The Bristolian photographer’s
Sections of England: The Sea Horizon, made up of 40 images of the Severn Estuary’s waters, is an extraordinary and timeless piece of work. See review, page 114. Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 13 Jul.
✽ Julie Brook: made, unmade Immersive film installation from land artist
Julie Brook exploring the desert landscapes of Libya and Namibia, in particular drawing on a local red pigment called Otjize. See review, page 114. Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, until Sat 1 Jun.
✽ Jupiter Artland The 100-acre sculpture park unveils its 2013 programme, including
a UK premiere by Sam Durant and the collaborative work of Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane. See preview, page 116. Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, Sat 25 May–Sun 15 Sep.
✽ Through American Eyes, Frederic Church and the Landscape Oil Sketch A celebration of American 19th century Romantic painter Frederic Church, renowned for his spectacular oil sketches of the US’s wide open landscapes. See preview, page 117. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 8 Sep.
✽ Carol Bove: The Foamy Saliva of
a Horse Immaculate installation from the New York artist, with this rearrangement of her exhibition, of the same name, from the 54th Venice Biennale. See review, page 114. Common Guild, until Sat 29 Jun.
16 May–13 Jun 2013 THE LIST 113
STEPHEN SUTCLIFFE: OUTWORK Ambitious new show from the Glasgow video artist
O ne only has to look at the names on the spines of the books projected on the two large side-screens that flank a central one in Stephen Sutcliffe’s large-scale film installation to get where he’s coming from. Philosopher Jacques Derrida, semiotician Roland Barthes, a book of Christopher Logue poems and even a DVD of Shelagh Delaney- scripted, Albert Finney-starring 1960s Brit-curio Charlie Bubble are all in there, in a mash-up of postmodern pop cultural ephemera.
Drawn from Sutcliffe’s personal archive of sound, broadcast and spoken word recordings dating back to a childhood in which he clearly didn’t get out much, Outwork was inspired by sociologist Erving Goffman’s book, Frame Analysis and was originally produced for the Margaret Tait Award. Beginning with hummed snatches of ‘The Internationale’ and ending with the opening
guitar riff of ‘Gloria’, Sutcliffe juxtaposes little documentary glimpses of iconic figures including absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco, and a grainy kidnap narrative seen through security cameras with plummy- vowelled voiceovers, snoring noises off camera and even an appearance by Sutcliffe himself. The projected captions for each brief section of this extended cut-up lend a further Brechtian distancing effect to a series of unreliable narratives akin to the sort of hobbyist tape recording clubs that embraced lofi technology in the 1960s. The result of such a liner of performance-based inquiry is a haunting meditation on how the familiar can be reimagined in a fair to middling world where beginnings have no end. (Neil Cooper)
Tramway, Glasgow until Sun 30 Jun ●●●●●