VISUAL ART | Previews & Reviews
REVIEW FILM LUKE FOWLER: THE POOR STOCKINGER, THE LUDDITE CROPPER AND THE DELUD- ED FOLLOWERS OF JOANNA SOUTHCOTT Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh until Sun 2 Nov ●●●●●
Luke Fowler’s ongoing fascination with icons of radical thought has extended from film works on punk band The Homosexuals and composer Cornelius Cardew to his Turner-nominated dissection of anti-psychiatrist RD Laing. Each of these features cut-and-pasted sound- and-vision collages of archive footage and newly filmed work to create a set of suitably world-turned-upside- down narratives. Like them, this 2012 study of Marxist historian and CND activist EP Thompson’s involvement with the Workers’ Educational Association is both an impressionistic portrait of its subject and a timely reminder of a vital figure all but airbrushed out of official history. For this 61 minute piece, originally commissioned by
the Hepworth, Wakefield, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Film and Video Umbrella, and now shown in Scotland for the first time as part of GENERATION, Fowler slows things down to play with form even more. As Ceryth Wyn Evans intones Thompson’s grimly poetic litanies over images of red brick Yorkshire towns that move between the black-and-white bustle of the past and the barren back-streets and To Let signs of today, the film becomes both oral history project and living newspaper, complete with Brechtian captions and reflections of Fowler in assorted windows. As a conduit for working class autodidacts, the WEA has vital umbilical links with the free university movement and today’s autonomous zones. The Great Learning goes on. (Neil Cooper)
PREVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY THE KING’S PEACE: REALISM & WAR Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, Fri 1 Aug–Sun 26 Oct PREVIEW INSTALLATION JOEY VILLEMONT: STUDIES FOR A COLLECTION CCA, Intermedia Gallery, Fri 25 Jul–Fri 8 Aug
‘Apart from the referendum, war is the big theme of 2014,’ says Kirsten Lloyd, curator of this group show at Stills. ‘We wanted to stand this theme on its head to instead explore the idea of peace. Our starting point was to make an exhibition about realist strategies, power relations, warmongering and the meaning of peace.’ The exhibition focuses on Owen Logan’s ‘Masquerade: Michael Jackson Alive in Nigeria (2001–2005)’, a fictional travelogue in which the late star’s changing appearance is used to, says Logan, ‘satirise Nigerian identity politics, a nation of over 250 different ethnic groups strategically stitched together by the British Empire for the benefit of imperial trade.’ Around this central work, other artists will
contribute pieces within these themes. ‘One of the contributing artists Fred Lonidier said, “What I always told my students about war photography is that the last place to go is the battlefield,”’ says Lloyd. ‘So where do you go? In this exhibition the contexts range from living rooms and rural villages to Tahrir Square and Wester Hailes. By placing them all cheek by jowl we want to create a space that provokes questions about the role of photography today.’ (David Pollock)
114 THE LIST 10 Jul–21 Aug 2014
Artist Joey Villemont has a lifelong enthusiasm for the history and techniques of fashion, from catwalk shows and drawings to online presentation and high-street retail. Since making his own clothes from the age of 14, he has continued to use this knowledge of fashion in his art practice, pro ducing exhibitions that place garments within specifically designed installations alongside an array of media such as film and sculpture. With Studies for a Collection, Villemont continues
to explore the possibilities that arise from the coming together of visual art and fashion. Re- contextualising modes of sensual display specifically designed to attract customers, this upcoming Intermedia exhibition presents new garments as sculptural objects. In finding inspiration in archival fashion exhibitions, Villemont points out: ‘It’s always a question of speaking the same language in the pieces and in the display. I am interested in a system of hybridisation: in the way an idea, a piece or a pattern can evolve from a logo or monogram – a system reminiscent of the creative industry’s use of brands, disseminating their identity through a multitude of shapes and products.’ (Dane Sutherland)
REVIEW SCULPTURE SARA BARKER: FOR MYSELF AND STRANGERS Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Sun 5 Oct ●●●●●
One of the strengths of GENERATION (the Scotland-wide visual art event currently taking place) is that it showcases not only the work of well- known Scottish contemporary artists but also of those who have quietly built up careers here without become well-known names. The opportunity for Sara Barker to present a major body of work at GoMA is one such welcome result.
Barker is a sculptor whose work sits somewhere between sculpture, painting and drawing. She uses fine metal to draw lines in space, creating delicate three-dimensional structures that seem to perch or hang from walls. Within the space at GoMA, she has created walls
that support her sculptures, defining new spaces for the pieces to inhabit. In what may be a new direction, several of the works suggest human presence. The interweaving lines in ‘In semi- darkness she reclines and pretends to read’ could be a reclining woman; ‘Cross sectioned feelings’ may evoke a figure leaning against a wall. Their quiet suggestiveness invites a greater sense of engagement with the viewer. (Susan Mansfield)