list.co.uk/festival Reviews | FESTIVAL VISUAL ART
P H O T O :
R O S S F R A S E R M C L E A N S T U D O
I
P H O T O :
R O S S F R A S E R M C L E A N
CAROLINE MESQUITA: CREAMED SACRIFICE French artist’s energetic metal sculptures ●●●●● RODERICK BUCHANAN: UNDERSTANDING VERSUS SYMPATHY Video portrait of Irish-born historian ●●●●●
OLIVIA WEBB: VOICES PROJECT Sound installation response to earthquake ●●●●●
Despite being made of heavy metals, Caroline Mesquita’s sculpture for Jupiter Artland feels oddly limber, like it might burst into life any second. Its shapes and forms intersect and contradict one-another like energetic brushstrokes giving the feeling of something very much alive. Creamed Sacrifice is made up of five life-size
components arranged in a circle. They are curious things: futuristic and historic looking at the same time. Standing in the middle of the work, the complexity of the piece becomes apparent. It isn’t immediately obvious the hollow tubes constituting much of the work are limp or flailing limbs. Abstract forms become figurative, and figurative forms return to abstraction. The strange orphic human forms are shackled to
two plinth-like structures as if they have been left for dead and have somehow been petrified and turned to bronze. The haunting casts of cowering men, women and children created in the wake of Mount Vesuvius come to mind. What epic event, real or fictional, is Mesquita’s tableaux commemorating? (Laura Campbell) ■ Jupiter Artland, 01506 889 900, until 25 Sep, free.
The words ‘In Memorium’ may be carved above the chapel entrance in the Edinburgh Cowgate church once at the centre of the capital’s ‘Little Ireland’, but Roderick Buchanan’s new film installation is anything but an elegy. As the film’s subject, Irish-born but Edinburgh-based historian Owen Dudley Edwards, talks about James Connolly, the Cowgate-sired radical who rose to fame through his role in the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, an entire history is rolled back and has fresh life breathed into it.
Over almost two hours of close-up conversation broken up by Brechtian-style captions, Dudley Edwards talks about church, state, politics and power in Ireland, Scotland and the bridges between the two. There are thumbnail portraits of Edinburgh and Dublin’s psycho-geography, past and present, and a nod too to Connolly’s great-grandnephew, journalist Ian Bell, who sadly died in December 2015. Each answer Dudley Edwards gives to interviewer Johnny Rogers is a gloriously discursive monologue that twinkles with anecdotal flourishes. His points are made with razor-sharp insight in this study of history- makers past and present. (Neil Cooper) ■ St Patrick’s Church, Cowgate, 556 1973, until 28 Aug, free.
Edinburgh Art Festival has a reputation for breathing new life into hidden parts of the city. Olivia Webb’s vocal installation is one such project, housed in Trinity Apse off the Royal Mile. In 2014, Webb created her Voices Project, a series
of sound installations featuring choral music from local community groups, which were positioned in locations around Christchurch in New Zealand that had been ruined by the 2011 earthquakes. For the EAF she has collapsed these Christchurch recordings into one, multi-channel sound work. Webb’s vocal recordings recreate the sense of community that church choirs can create, even in the midst of a crisis.
Her video work in one corner includes interviews with the people from Christchurch involved in the project, whose eyes are lit up with positive energy. The enthusiasm that Webb has created is admirable, but one can’t help wondering if a more haunting quality to the whole project would have made it more fitting in this particular space. Webb will also be running a series of choral workshops in Edinburgh that should respond more intuitively to the apse. (Rosie Lesso) ■ Trinity Apse, 556 4364, until 28 Aug, free. Choral workshop 13, 16 Aug (13 Aug, 3pm; 16 Aug, 7pm), free but booking required.
JO SPENCE Photography as a tool for empowerment ●●●●●
A predecessor of artists like Cindy Sherman and later Tracey Emin, Jo Spence was a formidable and pioneering artist. This exhibition at Stills pays homage to her life as much as her art, with a particular focus on the artist’s ‘Photo Therapy’ work and earlier collaborations with the artist group ‘The Polysnappers’. In ‘Middleclass Values Make Me Sick’ – part of her Photo
Therapy series – Spence is seen holding a placard that reads, ‘If I don’t need to please my parents any more, why should I worry about pleasing you middle class bastards’. Here is a woman with too much life experience to care what others think. Indeed, when this photo was taken Jo Spence had already been diagnosed with breast cancer. The pursuit of honesty and self-realisation at whatever cost – even in the face of death – seems to be the driving force behind much of her work. Spence used photography – a medium she once used to produce commercial photographs of happy families – to confront less palatable truths and to question the authority photography has in representing reality. A particularly moving work shows the artist baring a battle-scarred breast, her head concealed by a motorbike helmet. This photograph represents the artist’s defiance in the face of death: the illness may have disfigured her body, but it won’t take hold of her mind.
Stills provides lots of information for audience members unfamiliar with the artist. Vinyl lettering isn’t confined to the exhibition statement near the entrance, but accompanies the works themselves with quotes from the artist floating above and beside them. While such insight is helpful, Spence’s work is so refreshingly blunt that it doesn’t require further elucidation. In making herself vulnerable, Spence made it possible for other artists to follow suit. (Laura Campbell) ■ Stills Gallery, 622 6200, until 16 Oct, free.
11–18 Aug 2016 THE LIST FESTIVAL 101
Y R E L L A G S L L T S
I
: O T O H P