ART & EXHIBITIONS LIST
This section lists special exhibitions held outside Glasgow and Edinburgh. Galleries should contact Alice Bain with information at least two weeks in advance.
0 ABERDEEN ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM Schoolhill. ()224 646333. Mon—Sat 10am—5pm (Thurs 10am-8pm): Sun 2—5pm.
Peacock Printmakers: Recent Work 18 April-9 May. Contemporary work by printmakers from Aberdeen and beyong.
New Movement in Furniture 18 April-16 May. Innovative work exploring many materials while working to a high technical standard by Tony McMulIen. Danny Lane. Julia Tiesteel. Andre Dubreuil and Paul Sherratt. The exhibition also comments on furniture as image/status.
The Scottish Bestiary Until 11 June. The largest printmaking project made in Scotland this century. the Scottish Bestiary is a collection of illustrated stories. each describing the properties ofan animal. plant or stone. John Bellany. John Knox. June Redfern and Bruce McLean are amongst the contributing illustrators to George Mackay Brown‘s text. Stuart McKenzie: Artist-in residence until 27 June and the studio workshops will be open to the public every Thursday. Friday and Saturday during the residency. His work will be exhibited in the gallery 4 July-1 August.
0 CRAWFORD CENTRE FOR THE ARTS 93 North Street. St Andrews. Fife (0334) 76161 ext 591. Mon—Sat 10am—5pm: Sun 2—5pm.
Frances Polly-A Sculptor's Progress Until Sun 19 Apr. Rich in symbols and allusion. Pelly‘s work draws on historical tradition from 18th-century tombstones and even as back to prehistory. This exhibition presents a survey of her career.
‘A Man of Excellent Parts . . .’ Until Sun 19 Apr. The Life and World of Alexander Edward (1651—1708). Edward specialised in the design of formal gardens working at Kinross House. Hopetoun and the great estates of Hamilton. This is the first exhibition devoted to the man.
As An Fhearann/From the Land 24 Apr—25 May. A century of images from the Scottish highlands.
O McLEAN GALLERY 9 Union Street. Greenock. ()475 23741. Mon-Sat 10am—noon and 1—5pm.
Best of the McLean Until Sat 2 May. An excellent exhibition chosen by art critic Cordelia Oliver and her husband George from the gallery's permanent collection. David S Ewart‘s The Emigrants is a very controlled but moving image of leaving and Fergusson and Cadell are both represented with strong examples ofwork. McTaggart‘s The Blue Calm is a fine exercise in free handling ofpaint and subject and well illustrates how far he had come from the formalism of the early 19th century. Works by Corot and Courbet extend painting exhibition beyond Scotland. opening it up to an interesting European comparison.
OUTSIDE THE CITIES
DOUBLE EXPOSURE .Uaa ‘ " "-
Above: ‘Firsl Communion' by Bernard Faucon from Les Chambres D'Amour at Stills Gallery
Prescote and Stills Galleries, Edinburgh
Andy Goldsworthy’s ‘rain sun snow hail mist calm' (Prescote Gallery until 25 Apr) is both a photographic record of his work as a sculptor, and a complementary creative aspect of that work. Goldsworthy works with natural materials (wood, stone, snow, leaves) in theirnatural settings, creating constructions which mirror both the impermanence (serpentine snakes of snow or bracken leaves) and the imperishability (towers of balanced stones which may fall, but the stone will remain) of his subjects.
Below: ‘Frozen Snow March 1984' by Andy Goldsworthy
The photographs record both the
finished work, and the sculptorat work,
a convergence which marks an important element in his art, implying as it does both the harmony of the finished creation with its setting, and the imposition of Goldsworthy‘s art on that creation, which sets that work in tension with its surroundings. That is most evident in those works which transpose contrary materials — a ball of snow set amidst dry leaves, a snaking line of poppy petals running down a tree— or set up almost negative/positive versions oi near identical images within a single frame.
The exhibition incorporates several examples of his sculpture, including one of his remarkable lines of bracken leaves, but concentrates mainly on the photographic images. Goldsworthy's work questions the way in which we look at the natural world, and the way in which we conceive natural elements in their ‘proper' place, and does so with an essential minimum oi interference, making use of found materials and objects, natural shapes and textures, which are then subtley and provocatively (dis)placed to question those assumptions. Fascinating, and a neat complement to the Gallery of Modern Art’s current The Unpainted Landscape exhibition, which also features his work.
Bernard Faucon also asks disturbing questions about the way in which we perceive reality in his photographic constructs included in Les Chambres D'Amour (Stills Gallery until 9 May). The exhibition gathers some of his earlierwork as well as the title sequence, a series of surreal, highly composed tableaux vivants using mannequins ratherlhan real children most otthe time. These strangely evocative images probe at the memories and buried fantasies of childhood and adolescence, taking on a powerful metaphoric resonance from their concrete but non-specific associations, which occasionally flirt with conventional imagery (The First Communion, The Crucifixion), but mostly setup an odd, self-referential, allusive, forgotten world, where certain repeated elements take on multiple metaphorical significance, as
in the persistent recurrence of fire and flames, with all their attendant associations (of passion, desire, destruction, cleansing, rebirth).
Les Chambres D’Amour works in a slightly different way, a series of numbered rooms in which two lovers only occasionally figure. The presence of love, desire and passion is signified in the remainder by absence, as the photographer evokes emotional states through meticulously composed pictures of rooms covered in sand, or snow, orllowers, a figure glimpsed in a mirroror outlined in a shadow, a floor littered in glowing embers, the inevitable flames. Faucon believes that the intensity of experience can be evoked only through turning away from the moment itself, and concentrating on ‘the wrapping orthe tinsel', the detritus of passion which will reveal the state most profoundly; the haunting, fantastic images of Les Chambres D'Amour powerfully reflect that (very French) artistic conviction. (Kenny Mathieson)
051 TRAVELLING GALLERY The Scottish Arts Council‘s Travelling Gallery will be touring Kilmarnock and Loudoun/Cunninghame Districts until Sat 18 April. The exhibition PaperJourneys features work by printmaker Jacki Parry and photographer Ruth Stirling. For tour information contact Information Officer on ()31 2266051 at the SAC.
0 DUNDEE PRINTMAKERS WORKSHOPZSEAGATE GALLERY 36-41) Seagate. Dundee. (1382 26331.
Jim Pattison—At Work Until 28 April. Jim Pattison. painter and printmaker. who work was very recently seen at the Glasgow Print Studio will be working in the gallery and available to the public throughout the gallery opening
hours.
AUCTIONS
O ASSEMBLY ROOMS 5-1 (ieorge Street
Christie’s: Important English, Scottish and Continental Paintings (late IBIhC-ZOth) Tues 28 April. 6.30pm. Christie‘s first important sale ofthe year in this category.
44 The List 17— 3ll April