Visual Art
MlXEl) MEDIA CEL SCOTLAND: PRACTICE AND PROCESS Edinburgh Printmakers, until Sat 17 Sep 000
Marking a new collaboration between Edinburgh Printmakers. Glasgow Print Studios. Dundee Contemporary Arts and Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen entitled Contemporary Editions Limited Scotland. this exhibition purports to guide us through the processes of a range of Scots artists as they transfer the thinking behind their usual practice to the arena of printmaking.
While it's by no means any sort of technical masterclass — particularly as many of those involved only have two or three works on display —- this is. first and foremost. simply an interesting and entertaining collection of art over various media. While. for example. Kenny Hunter's bron/e bust 'Anomre' holds little connectiOh to his printed cityscape diptych Modern Routes Modern Roofs'. each :s still a precisely crafted and attractive piece. The same goes for Martin Boyce's skewed perspective hanging steel gate 'Wake Up and Think About It“ in comparison wrth his colour collage prints ‘Brushing Against Strange Weeds We Are ReSIstaht' and ‘We Dry Out in the Sun'. absorbing though they are.
Closer to the context of the show are Katy Dove's prints. which free/e frame the floating Rorschach images of her film ‘You'. Toby Paterson's abstract architectural studies ‘Parkhill' (printi and 'Citrus Fruit Market' ipaintr. and Renato Galate's mixed media studies in unidentified vegetation. David Sherry's cartoonish ‘Psycho Birds' and Decision Making Becoming t_(~}l8tll'()!‘y" ithe latter sltowing a hand With each nail peeled almost to the guicki are also amusingly irreverent fun. While it might not stick to the letter of the brief. then. this show stiil features enough intriguing work to be entirely desen/ing of a Visit. iDaVid Poirocki
l’l l()l()(‘rHAl’l lY BIRGIR ANDRESSON Sleeper, until Fri 2 Sep 00
Accordi :g to lizrgsr Andresson. the tilll‘~.'(}l'53(} can be located in Iceland. It's a modest loo-king house that hes ($5.22 degrees north and 22.55 degrees west. to be prec=se. there are also a few Ltverpools. lasgows and Edinburghs not far off. and they a?! look we“, alike.
lucked away if S‘eeper. a tiny basement gallery in an architect's .‘irm. Andressen's i‘eat Wilt} series of black and white photographs are part historical (l()(itr".‘(?l".. part artistic er‘deayou'. He has created a VlStlEil record of houses the Iceland'c ueo re have itanied after British locations. collectir‘ig images of both existing and \.'ai‘rshed places over the past ten years.
The se<:-"‘~aitg., disjt)ir‘te<i geography brings out a htirhorous play on names. where ‘..'1(E(;(i.".it‘:xl o‘ Aberdeen or London is so far from that of the flat. toy-like l‘ouses whzch have '€}(il£t'.'“.(}(l these titles as their own. But this namzng is by no li‘.()£tl‘$; accidentai Andressori notes that some of the house names are more than scathing: one house. 't :\.'erpool'. gets its name from the smell of melting fish livers. while ‘Sibei'»a' s s i called because :t's a simply a cold hOuse.
But, guite separate from their MUS. the pictures of these houses also possess a ferrous sense o‘ (lOESO'itIKHT ‘.'/li(3'l they are put alongside each other. Almost all of the piistog'; phs are ‘.’()l(l of people. and when figures are caught next to the buildings they are fleeting or in:ristinguishable. This cold record shows how the buildings ; piteai' estranged not only from their names but also from any sense of lltllltill‘ feeiing. / ltfll'i‘fiSSOl‘ has captured a catalogue of a kind of no-man's land that without their tities. appears (tuite unremarkable. rlsla Leaver-Yaw
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TEAMING & TEAM SCREEN
The Embassy, until 4 Sep & Magnifitat, 18 Aug, 8-10pm
Collaborative art has often run against the grain of the single ‘genius’ artist, where the work of a group of artists is somehow tainted or is less pure than that of the individual. But the Embassy’s forthcoming show revels in this kind of group practice. In Teaming, artworks are not so much contaminated by artists’ collective visions, but enhanced, extended and diversified.
Gathering works from New York, Amsterdam and Britain, it includes work ranging from figureheads, such as the Boyle Family, to local creative productions like John Mullen and Lee O’Conner.
Curator of the show Kim Coleman has brought out a mash-up of projections, drawings, magazines and documentaries which spark off each other’s differences or else coincidentally feed into similar themes. Coleman does not pretend that the show presents an objective vision of collaborative practice, but has constructed a highly personalised idea of collaboration as a form of creative exchange, not just between two artists, but also between gallery, curator and artist groups.
The focus of the show, which includes previously unseen footage of the Boyle Family’s 1965 ICA exhibition, is so broad, in fact, that it has spilled out into the seventh Magnifitat film programme. Running in tandem with the Embassy's exhibition, the programme will be an intimate screening of collaboratively-made films by the likes of Ulay/Abramovic and Charles and Ray Eames. (lsla Leaver-Yap)
it“: . :' THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 85