Festival Visual Art list.co.uk/festival
EVA HESSE: STUDIOWORK Sculptural works create a delectable feast for contemporary eyes ●●●●●
Latex, cotton, rubber, wire, steel, wood, fibreglass, polyester resin and plastic are but some of the raw materials used as sculptural ingredients to cook up seductive objects that speak to our archetypal wonder of things – functional or ornamental, voodoo amulets or alien children’s DIY toys: Eva Hesse’s studio pieces are lovely to look at. For an artist who died at the age of 34, in 1970, German-born American Hesse was extremely prolific. She started producing sculptural pieces in the mid 1960s and is associated with the postminimal anti-form trend in sculpture around that time.
This exhibition is curated by Hesse scholar Briony Fer, who chose to
focus on the artist’s ‘test pieces’. Whether they ask questions about the nature of sculpture, or re-evaluate an important aspect of the artistic practice, these small, often delicate and ephemeral objects have been placed to show the informality of pieces made in the studio. Hesse’s signature materials age badly and have changed colour over
time, giving them the status of small relics or icons. These anthropological gems will be a dream for future ethnographers. The gallery downstairs displays smaller pieces set in vitrines – awkward
objects, very tactile, hand made, and often in pairs, resembling body parts.
Upstairs one encounters black reptile eggs which hang weightily in
fishing nets; black balloon-shaped spray-painted fetish objects washed up on the shore. Amber coloured stringy intestines – a large coil of latex- covered wire – hang at the end of the gallery like some altar from which an offering is being made. And then, beautifully placed, are the delicate paper vessels – like leafy boats they hover on the white plinth and cast monumental shadows. So quiet, peaceful and in perfect squadron they seem about to float into infinity, but this fleet is frozen in time, as if time is standing still, allowing you to move around them. The visceral power of the work remains relevant despite the passage of
time. This show is an accolade to Hesse’s output, and conjures up a delectable feast for contemporary eyes. (Talitha Kotzé) ■ The Fruitmarket Gallery, 225 2383, until 25 Oct, free.
GRANDMOTHER WAITS FOR YOU Oddly beautiful structure explores ageism, community and unconditional love ●●●●●
Centred on an undeniably impressive central knitted construct that stretches from the ground floor balustrade all the way to the ceiling of this curious backstage venue Grandmother Waits For You is cheeky conceptualism for The Matrix generation.
Wool thread links Teletubby dolls, children’s jumpers, small cuddly toys and anything else that a grandmother would make or gift to her children’s children. This odd and beautiful structure is the result of a mass collaboration involving knitting groups, residents from sheltered accommodation and a ragbag of local artists (special thanks goes to the Sunblush group from Preston who knitted over 140 ‘hubs’). Using language that could have been lifted straight from Steven Hall’s The Raw
Shark Texts, the supporting literature describes the sculpture as a work of ‘relational engineering’ and containing ‘thriving nodal “hot clusters” and random ends symbolising exclusionary “dread zones.”’ All of which is quite amusing but the supporting material disappoints. Made up of over 100 global submissions, this tatty selection of photographs, photocopied A4 sheets and assorted odds and ends is a poor adjunct to the ideas of ageism, community and unconditional love that the central work engenders. A brave if foolhardy step into the ‘noosphere’ (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere). (Paul Dale) ■ Embassy Gallery, 0795 087 2479, until Sat 5 Sep, Thu–Sun noon-6pm or by appointment, free.
72 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 20–27 Aug 2009
REWIND: ARTISTS’ VIDEO IN THE 70s & 80s Audience-unfriendly presentation of a tricky medium ●●●●●
In 1968 the portable camcorder was invented, and the decades which followed were a period of impassioned invention and experimentation in a fertile new medium.
Rewind contains fine examples of video art. There are classic videos like David Hall’s ten ‘Television Interruptions’, which were broadcast unannounced on Scottish television in 1971, and there are endless experiments in which heads and bodies move and shake and undergo manipulation to the limits of the Sony Portapak’s ability.
But early video art is a difficult medium to appreciate. For a 21st-century camcorderer the limits of the Portapak are definitely so-what. If Rewind is going to attract anyone other than the specialists, we need to be told what we’re watching and what makes this stuff groundbreaking. A flimsy file gives artist biographies and sporadic comments on the works on the screen, but it is too little and too hard to find.
It also needs to tighten its curatorial act in several other areas. In the
downstairs viewing area a CD player blares from a corner, providing a second soundtrack to whichever video you happen to be watching. The headphones pick up signals from other televisions, so that I hear ‘Television Interruptions’ to a soundtrack of ‘Happy Birthday’ and a conversation about shovelling shit. Finally, beneath the 1984 video of a lactating breast, a protest at the hostility faced by women trying to breastfeed in public, a sign warns that the film ‘contains mild nudity and may not be suitable for children’.
Fertile films maybe, but they need more help. (Lizzie Mitchell) ■ Stills Gallery, 622, 6200, until 25 Oct, free.