ART REVIEW
In Stephen Skrynka’s solo exhibition, a video showing a rural Italian pig- slaughtering ceremony flickers beside a 16ft glass wall pumped with compartments of coloured jelly. The film was shot by his uncle and sent to Skrynka’s mother, who left her southern Italian village during the 50s. Skrynka explains what these images mean to him and how they relate to his sweet-smelling installation.
‘By showing the film I’m showing the reasons I made the other work, which is quite seductive and alluring on its own. We’re disassociated from the stuff we consume - not just the stuff we eat, but the stuff of everyday life. Jelly is such a frivolous thing. It’s a food with no nutritional value. The film shows these people killing the pig for consumption. It’s a scene of collaboration: a very natural process that has always gone on.
‘l’m not trying to say this is an idyllic lifestyle we hanker towards. I’m drawn towards it because these are all relations of mine and there’s a very strong link. The other side of it is that I feel as distanced from it as perhaps you do: it’s so divorced from my own life.
‘The easy reaction to the film would have been to use parts of animal for the installation, which would have been very contemporary. There’s a lot of that stuff around. A lot of people coming here have expected that and I’m glad to have disappointed them. To have used, say pigs’ entrails would have denigrated the film completely.
‘I decided to leave the film as it was — unforced and unpretentious. It isn’t trying to be anything other than a diary of a special occasion in the village. It works as this piece of work shot by my uncle, who’s totally anonymous.
‘I haven’t eaten meat for ten years, but I don’t have a problem with eating meat per se. When I have visited my grandmother I have eaten meat. She can choke a chicken and have it in a pot the same day. I can handle that, violent as it is. What I can’t handle is what ends up on supermarket shelves and on our plates.’ (Kathleen Morgan)
La Feste del Maiale: Celebration of the Pig by Stephen Skrynka is at lntermedia Gallery, Glasgow until Fri 3 Feb.
MAKE YOUR LOVE POBLIO.
See page 71
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PHOTOGRAPHY
As time goes by
In Sometimds), Yves Lomax challenges many of the assumptions surrounding photography. Lila Rawlings took a look at the work and talked to her about her ideas and influences.
Ever since Fox Talbot‘s l’wtt'i/ of
Nature. published in 18-14. photography
has been seen as a way of capturing a
moment. freezing time and reproducing reality. From devastating war reportage
to family albutn snapshots. the power of photography is its ability to evoke time. place or situation in an
immediate. often uncompromising way. In .S‘omt'limets) Yves Lomax plays with
the idea that photographic time can be an altogether more elusive. Iluid concept open to a variety of interpretations.
In eight Inontage-lxrsed pieces. documentary images appear next to coloured shapes and in sotne cases icons such as a Celtic knot. ‘With any single image there is tnore than one story/time that can be told.‘ says
Lomax. ‘My starting point was the idea
of different perceptions of time:
rectilinear time: circular or linear time; even in-between time. and the different
ways that cultures image these notions oftitnc.‘ This fascination with
multiples of meaning and time is followed through into the asymmetric frames Lomax has used to evoke the idea of inside and outside space. ‘A
frame is often seen as a boundary but I
like to see it as continuous space.
Where does one image stop and another
begin. where do boundaries begin and
end?
Much of Lomax‘s thinking has been influenced by philosopher l-lenri
, Bergson who wrote about the
relationship between time and space. ‘l’hotography is another example of how we imagine or ‘spacialise‘ time. one frame after another. but the tnobility of time can never be truly fixed because it's always in a
continuous llux.‘ she says.
An influential writer of photographic 3 theory as well as a practising artist. Yves Lomax is keen to break down the barriers that exist between practice and theory. ller ideas and approach are exciting. the work itself less so. Like tnuch conceptual art. there is a distance to the work that makes it appear tnore academic and dry than is perhaps intentional. However. the off-beat. often funky framing devices succeed in their refusal to conform to convention and challenge tts to rethink our expectations of pictorial and gallery space. .S'ontr’linu’fsl is (1! Portfolio Gallery. Edinburgh until [8 Feb.
Bunch of fives
In a game of two halves, Kathleen Morgan tackles Glasgow artist Roderick Buchanan about his photographic images of five-a-side footballers.
If football is an art. it rarely ventures off the pitch and into the gallery. That is something Glasgow artist Roderick Buchanan aims to change with an exhibition of photographs at the city‘s Tramway. exploring the glamour.
humour and fanaticism associated with
five-a-side football. Buchanan knows the game frotn both sides of the camera — the former
Rangers Boys Club player frequents the
same Glasgow Iive-a-side parks that provided the fodder for his first solo
exhibition. ll’ork Ill Progress is a series
of head and shoulder shots of players draped in the colours of two of the world's top professional teams. These are no football stars. but Glasgow men of varying ages who for one night a week. step into the glamorous world and corresponding colours of A. C. Milan and Inter Milan. ‘lt's the whole fantasy of being an Italian footballer.‘ says Buchanan. ‘The whole world is in love with Italians and the whole Iatin
inclination to spend about £4011 time on their coveted Italian shirts. They belong to a culture which has mushroomed in the last decade. concentrating Glasgow‘s passion for football into small. enmeshed pitches costing £3 a head. per hour to hire.
For this exhibition. Buchanan drove his father's van to the city's ftve-a-side pitches, propping a board against the vehicle and finding players to stand in front of it. Most had just cotne off the
I parks and were dripping in sweat when Buchanan approached them.
‘ ‘I had to coax them and talk to them.‘ _| says Buchanan of his subjects. ‘()ne in
Inter Milan: Glasgow style I ten will say: “Fuck off." Others are
lover thing permeates.‘ Speaking in the bar overlooking The
Pll’l. five-a-side parks in Glasgow‘s
|
: Townhead. the 29-year-old Glasgow School of Art graduate explains why he
brought his catnera into a domain he is used to viewing from the pitch: ‘I wanted to take photographs of Glaswegians. but I wanted it to be a self-selecting group. I decided on Glaswegians who wore AC. and Inter Milan football strips. the tnost popular strips on the parks except Rangers and Celtic. I wanted to know if there was a place in the city where you could recognise whether people were Glasgwegian or not.‘
Capturing the uniform stance and background of the classic football card
' image. Buchanan’s photographs are
generally of working class men with jobs, who have the money and
dead keen. You fall into the role of pz’patazzo and they fall into the role of being the fantasy footballer. Some of the expressions on their faces are totally out of .S't'olsporl.‘
This is Buchanan's first solo exhibition and one which takes him away from the mixed media he usually works with: ‘I'm not a photographer by training.‘ llis images should speak to a wide audience — from those comfortable in the gallery environment. to those more at case on the football pitch or terrace. Buchanan aims to advertise his exhibition in the five-a— side ccntres he trailed for photographic fodder. but insists there are no noble motives behind it: ‘I‘ve no great quest to evangelise with att.‘
Work In Progress by Roderick Bur/tumor is (it [he Project Room in the 'I'rumtt'ay. Glasgow until 26 1’01).
62 The List 27 Jan-9 Feb I995