PAINTING ALISON WATT Memorial Chapel, Old St Paul’s, until Sun 26 Sep and Ingleby Gallery, until Sat 11 Sep 00..
Alison Watt at the Ingleby Gallery
Feted since she left Glasgow School of Art in 1988, Alison Watt has struck an unnervingly clear-headed course towards success. As a student, she won the prestigious National Portrait Gallery prize and by 2000 had an exhibition of her own at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. During that time, her painting has evolved from detailed portraits playing seriously with props (her head adorned with a teacup being one of the first) to an abstracting obsession with cloth in dramatic dimensions, draped and folded with the sensuality of skin.
This year, she moves another beautifully orchestrated step ahead, unerringly placing four canvasses together in a small chapel of remembrance in a hideaway church in the centre of town. It’s a brilliant act. Both the venue and her work entitled Still are winners. Consecrated as a Scottish Episcopal place of worship, St Paul’s still demands whisper and reverence. Not immediately obvious, Watt’s paintings are at home in this atmosphere of gently enforced peace. Hung out of the way in a small stone chapel designed in the 19205 to pay homage to lives lost in WW1, the paintings are hung four square to create a single image of alluring drapery, modestly lit by window and candelight. Narrow gaps between them create the appearance of a large cross, one of the many abstracted references from the histories of life, art and religion which penetrate the deep white folds. The image is at once monumental and heart-stoppingly simple. Watt may have discarded her interest in painting people in the flesh, but souls have somehow survived. With
quiet majesty this group takes on a spiritual resonance that leads you to wonder.
A small exhibition of three large paintings and three small, all white with one black sheep among them, continue the theme and allow close up viewing at the Ingleby Gallery. Like Georgia O’Keefe flowers, the swathes of material take on the essence of body parts, while the paint surface, spare and precise, occasionally allows the weave of
canvas to join in the show.
With its unusual double venue - church and Georgian gallery - this exhibition is quintessential Edinburgh Festival territory with the added thrill that it has been conceived by a painter in her prime. Where Alison Watt may turn up
next, only heaven knows. (Alice Bain)
View from above
INSTALLATION SANDY WURMFELD:
CYCLORAMA
Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until 25 Sep 00.
Walking up the stairs into the centre of the Cyclorama. the Viewer is confronted With a continuous river of intense. almost eye-aching colour. It seems to glow and shimmer on first glance. so that it is only on closer inspection that it is DOSSIbIe to see the incredible detail in Sandy Wurmfeid's 360 degree colour wheel. Blue merges into green then shifts subtly into yellow and so on through the rainbow. which makes trying to distinguish where one starts and another begins almost impOSSible. This is because no one section IS made up of Just a single hue: each is checked With thin lines of another shade and then crossed by yet another tint. making a total of 72
12 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 19-26 Aug 200.:
colours in all.
The New York-based painter's work is incredibly meticulous and very impresswe in itself. but those expecting an intense. enclosed installation WI“ be disappomted. The set cp is fairly makeshift so that the noises and distractions around the room tend to detract from the Viewers experience. The rest of the exhibition is made up of Wurmfeld's preparatOry studies. which Simply replicate what is seen in the main exhibit. albeit With mOre variety of colour and pattern. There is also a selection of books on colour theOry and an example of the kind of panoramic paintings that inspired Wurmfeld. this time Robert Black's 1788 painting of the all-round View from the top of Calton Hill. While the detail in all of these is ImDFeSS'Ve. its impact is shon IlVGd. iRachael Street,
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It's ven,’ hard to know Nllle to make of it all. Icelandic artist Gildiiiiiiirluson has adapted the environment well, meaning the work can be ‘/|(;‘.’/(:(l at. it‘. best. Clearly the object here I‘) to appraise the minimalism. either losing yOLirseIl in COntemplation of it or Simply recognis‘ing it as a substance- free idea and comprehend the aesthetic. Which means it‘s trapped between pillar and post. unfortunately — despite Gudmundsson's eloquent COpy in the accompanying book. Ill‘: l‘) too short to rationalise a piece as knowmgly explicit as this. If/hirji means — appropriately. seeing as it's held in the basement of an architect's office — that the look of the thing matters far more than the concept. {Dawd Pollocki