Festival Visual Art
TRACEY EMIN: 20 YEARS Emin thrills . . . and disappoints 000
Tracey Emin seems to polarise opinion - just check out the online comments on her column in The Independent. One of Britain’s most recognisable YBA artists, she’s been nominated for the Turner Prize and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, but mention her name and you may have to wait a little while for the tutting and eye-rolling to stop. 80 it will be interesting to see the reaction to the Gallery of Modern Art’s flagship summer exhibition: Emin’s first museum retrospective, covering 20 years of work.
Alongside her famous appliquéd blankets are a plethora of works, including installations, sculptures, paintings, prints, neon and film pieces. Many artworks incorporate hand written pieces of text, which are worth reading. Her sculptures aren’t particularly exciting, and some of the later blankets are also pretty dull, although there are some beautiful embroidered pieces featuring female figures adapted from her drawings.
However, after a couple of rooms you may begin to suffer Tracey-fatigue: her work is famously autobiographical, but her relentless presence can become extremely wearing. Even ‘My Bed’, which is surprisingly sad and diminutive in scale, features a blurry polaroid of Emin’s face on a side-table.
Emin has created some genuinely touching, sensitive and important work: her drawings and writings about her abortions are extremely powerful, and she sometimes elicits real insights. As an important female artist, who has mined her past for source material, let’s hope that the overexposure of her ‘girl-about-town’ media persona hasn’t blunted the impact of her art.
(Liz Shannon) I National Gallery of Modern Art, 0737 (524 6200. until 9 Nov. lOarii-6pm, £6 (£4)
ANDREW GRASSIE: PAINTING AS DOCUMENT
Deceptive photo-realism 000
This survey exhibition of recent and new work by Andrew Grassie. his first major solo show in Scotland. exhibits a selection of the artist's paintings from the past ten years. When first Viewed together. this output appears terribly uniform. The artist '8 small photo-realist works adorn the gallery walls like precious gems. illuminated by their rich. egg-tempura hues. All are devoid of a central focus and most depict art-world scenes: an imagined hanging at Tate Modern. gallery installations and the government's art collections store room.
The exhibition title refers to a time before the invention of the camera. when painting was a trusted form of documentation. and yet it still takes a glance at two Or three of Grassie's works to realise that these are not photographs. but paintings. His painterly skills lay a solid foundation for further such frustrations. The artist ‘s use of a Renaissance technique to document recognisable Modernist art works and contemporary spaces further challenges the viewer. Forced to form a judgemental hierarchy between the original works represented in the image. the picture plane and the overall artistic concept. the viewer feels vexed. Any conclusive thoughts of these artworks are perpetually deferred by Grassie's complex conceptual intercessions. a premise which casts a sense of loss and depravity over this exhibition. For the theorist. Grassie‘s explicit exploration of the derivative nature of contemporary art is an illustrious resource. For the casual viewer, however, this is an alienating. dense and stylistically fixed survey of work. (Rosalie Doubal)
I Talbot Rice Gallery 650 2270. until 27 Sept. Mon-Sat 70am-5pm (Sun 2pm— 5pm), freeA
84 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE W 14 Aug 2008
‘The Perfect Place To Grow’
THE GOLDEN RECORD - SOUNDS OF EARTH
In space, no one can hear you laugh. .0.
If the truth really is out there. the prospect of aliens landing on a planet populated by posh comedians would be enough to send them zapping back beyond Uranus in double-quick hyper-drive. The comedy aspect is one of the more worrying premises of this show. which attempts to update the sights and sounds of a compilation album shot off into space with 1977's Voyager mission. overseen by polo-neck wearing pop scientist Carl Sagan. whose ‘billions and billions‘ catchphrase was regularly lampooned on TV.
The main room hosts 1 16 album-cover style interpretations of the original record's track listing, from ‘Conception' and ‘Human Sex Organs' to the magnificently named Demonstration of licking. eating and drinking.‘ Elsewhere. tongues are fixed firmly in space helmets. in a film depicting a parallel universe in‘ which Sagan marries doomed chanteuse Karen Carpenter. whose interpretation of ‘Calling Occupants Of lnterplanetary Craft“ by Canadian prog trio Klaatu was a smash hit the same year as Voyager took flight. Elsewhere. assorted stand-ups give on-camera addresses as a precursor to a series of live comic hustings. to find out who will represent the human race.
Beyond the pictures. which are charmingly akin to the recent visual depictions of The Harry Smith Anthology. the first film resembles something Chris Morris might have constructed over a few minutes a few years back. while the comedy shorts occupy one more mirth-free Fringe zone. As one-line jokes go. The Golden Record is a hyper-satirical blast. but hardly representative of the finest minds of Sagan and Carpenter's. or indeed Stewart Lee‘s. generation. (Neil Cooper)
I Collective Gallery, 22-28 Cockburn Street, 07 37 220 7 260. until 73 Sep. Tue- Sat. 7 2-5pm, tree.
THE ‘
GOLDEN # RECORD *
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