Zeyad Dajani Glasgow: Fly, until Sun 17 May ink
This is a startling installation, if only in so much as when you arrive, it seems as if the show hasn't yet. Entitled Outside The Whale, it’s billed as an exploration of two Spaces and the links between them. One is the fledgling Fly Gallery in Glasgow's Duke Street, the other nearby Onslow Square.
Entering Fly, plain panels have been placed around the walls, while the room is divided by two giant wooden beams. Differences in colour and texture in the panels diVide it again. Most panels are white, some bare strawboard, two more are behind glass
Divided spaces: Dajani's Outside the Whale
and one is plastered.
And that's it. One hesitates to mention the emperor’s new clothes, but you do feel as if you're missing the point. The open space up the hill at Onslow Square has also been diVided, by two parallel walls of the now familiar strawboard.
The organisers fear that this unprotected work may be targetted by vandals or graffiti artists. However, some input from the local community might add some life and intelligibility to the work. Fortunately the boards in the square are still pristine. Perhaps the locals are understandably baffled. (Stephen Naysmith)
The House In The Woods
Glasgow: CCA until Sat 16 May ****
Two Furs (detail) by Weibke Semp
If you go down to The House In The Woods, you'll find an enjoyable, playful show of contemporary German art. It rubbishes the stereotype that all Teutonic artists are bombastic, humourless, macho poseurs.
All the works by the five artists aim to evoke memories of a childlike, fairytale world. Unashamedly romantic and nostalgic, the artists allude to archetypal fears and pleasures.
Traditional craft skills are employed in figurative sculptures such as Martin Honert’s small boy, who forlornly stares into space. Stephan Balkenhol’s imposing wood sculptures of an angel, devil and globe seem to hark back to a simpler, less conceptual role for art. However, like many other artists' forays into na'i‘vety and innocence, this work hints that the child's world is a contested, turbulent place.
There is something quite peculiar about much of this work. Viewers are invited to participate in a physical relationship with the sculptures: an unfamiliar experience these days, but actually qune old-fashioned. The chance to see work from outwith the confines of the Cool Britannia scene is also something of a IONIC.
(John Beagles)
STAR RATINGS it vi it * * Unmissable * i * it Very 00d 1: it * Wort a shot it it Below average 1r You've been warned
reviews ART
Life Support
Edinburgh: College ofArt until Tue l2 May *tsk
People of the Casualty and ER generation are well-versed in the notion of 'life support.’ Lined with impressive machinery to marshal the unfortunate through that touch-and-go limbo-land between life and death, the life support unit is indeed a perilous place. Now, artist Tom Hackett has marched into the terrain. Dubbed 'the master of spectacular sculptural lunacies', Hackett has, in the past, produced an army of outsize deck-chairs and suspended countless galvanised buckets from the outside of London‘s Battersea Arts Centre.
Do not go to Life Support expecting blood and guts, flickering monitors or deep breathing. Or for that matter, a whole unit of handsome but appropriately earnest medical staff. In a corridor of the Edinburgh College of Art, Hackett has suspended 30 butyl rubber air sacs Each sac is filled With the exhaled air from a donor. Over hours the sacs gradually deflate and the donor is expected to exhale a few more breaths to plump up the sac. A clipboard (the kind suspended from a patient's hospital bed) hangs below eath sac displaying various comments — frequently inane from the dorms
Described as an examination of ’peisonal territories, air quality and survival’ the installation does not quite get there. it's not all hot an but comes pretty close. (Susanna Beaumont)
'Are we nearly there?': Edward Fellows' This Could Go On Forever
Background
Edinburgh: Matthew Architecture Gallery until Fri 29 May * it **
The engine revs up and we are off on a 45-minute Journey, Snaking through the urban landscape, we catch glimpses of office blocks and street corners. The engine drones on. Clouds slink across the sky, as the car twists and turns, arriving at a greener landscape punctuated by the occasional pylon.
Edward Fellows' Video protection This Could Go On Forever takes us back to childhood car Journeys. As we sit on the back seat of the family saloon, the thought that continually tickles the mind is ’Are we nearly there?’. The Video is shot from a single Vieprint, ,iust above the driver’s mirror, in what looks likes a mid-705 Mini Clubman. There is a dull ache of monotony. Endless roads, a nag of car sickness and the gentle groan of gear changes
The film is projected onto a papei screen punched with holes and wrapped around three columns — this also helps transport us back It alludes both to the punched plastic which lined cai roofs hack in the 70s and to the fall of light that streaks and then shadows the interior of a car at night
Somehow it is not the same when you get older. Pass the travel sweets. (Susanna Beaumont)
Intermission Edinburgh: Cameo Cinema until Sun 1 7 May s * it
When you are up against Jack/"e Brown on the big screen it can’t be easy. Full- colour, gripping storyline and cracking dialogue make Tarantino’s latest a dominating feature of any space But for artist Helen MrCrorie, it IS a crucial part of the package.
The first of three site-specific protects at the Cameo, lvlcCrone’s installation at the back of Screen One is all about ’the mechanics of the illusion and the highly controlled enVironment' A wealth of small glass lenses are attached to the back wall of the cinema. Each lens is attached in turn to a small piece of perspex. As the big screen is animated With action, the image is reproduced in blurred form and dances out on the countless pieces of perspex
it is quite mesmerising to see Bridget Fonda and Samuel L. Jackson rendered miniature and unidentifiable The thrill, it seems, is also rather exclusive. I had crept into Cameo One and loneied at the back, but of course all other eyes were glued to the big screen
Back in the Cameo Bar things are slightly easier. McCione has projected on to the wall the eyes of a filmstar Heavy with irxascara, they gaze heavenwards. All very theatrical it is too (Susanna Beaumont)
3O Apr-~14 May 1998 THE “3175