ART
PREVIEW
Continental Drift: Europe Approaching The Millennium
Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 26 Sep—8 Nov & l4 Nov—9 Jan
We’re meant to be living in the Global Village, yet political parties lose elections over their position on Europe and tabloids still run regular features on the bureaucrats of Brussels interfering with the shape of our bananas.
Which is where Continental Drift comes in. When this series of ten large scale works was first commissioned from more than a hundred proposals, each artist’s brief was a deceptively simple one: a vision for Europe after the millennium.
Strangely, none of the ten opted for pictures of stupid dome-like structures. Works range from Martin Parr's Ooh La La!, a study of European stereotypes, to Keith Piper's Four Frontier, which looks at Europe in relation to the four points of the compass. It is this work that Director Anne McNeill sees as being the pivot of the
Fritz Welch & Anne-
Detail from the video, Always Have And Always Will by Anne-Marie Copestake
A portrait by Marie-lo Lafontaine
show.
'lt’s taking Europe as a central point, but stretching the
boundaries,’ she says, ’I was quite adamant when we started that one thing the exhibition shouldn't be was Euro-centric.’ Each work initially hung separately but simultaneously in venues in and around Yorkshire — this approach acknowledges the state of flux it aims to represent. Assembling all ten artists’ works in one space at The Fruitmarket for the first time, could be seen as a move to healing the ontological rift, except that, the collected Continental Drift is too large to fit into the Fruitmarket space at any one time and has been forced to split into two separate exhibitions. Significant?
’When I first took on the job, it seemed like the works were a pretty disparate bunch,’ recalls McNeill, ’but when you actually look at the proposals, you can see connections running through all the works.’
Paul Brooks, one of the exhibition's selectors, agrees. ’There are ten individual parts to it,’ he says, ’but once you look closely, you see that the total is far greater than the sum of its parts.’ (Neil Cooper)
improved basement space -the div.d'iic1 wall has been removed) Hoaxes/er With Similar plays on the real-life confeSSional by Gillian Wearing or Sam TayIOr-Wood long in circulation, you wonder where Copestake intends to go With her fictional equivalent Upstairs, New York resident Frit/ Welch has drawn on the walls A car has turned into a stretched tangle of strands, as if melted down to leave ;ust its entrails On another wall, two women are shown sitting together, one touching the other's turnrny It is called Teenage iii/chute and \(‘-.".‘.’r"",‘\ an enormity of intimacy Elsmthme, swathes of wall are painted a cluskv pink They offer a calming punduation tO the Welch's sure-handed
and
On a
Marie Copestake
Glasgow: Transmission Gallery until Sat 3 Oct e a A Lined up on a sofa, three men shuffle. One picks at his nails, another looks into the middle distance, the third looks deCidedly glum. In Anne-Marie Copestake's new Video work, Always Have And Always Will, you get the sense of not only eavesdropping but also playing Judge.
One screen remains fixed on the sofa,
78 THE LIST 24 Sep—8 Oct 1998
while on another screen the same figures alternately appear solo, They echo each other’s lines: ’l don’t hurt anyone. . or ’I didn’t hit anyone . . Each line is delivered With different intonation and emphasis by the three young males, A feeling of CODfUSlOn sets in: what's gomg on Within this domestic scene? What did go on in this interior?
Copestake generates intrigue, divulging very few facts, and the piece looks good in Transmission's new,
beautiful butchery of forms soundtrack entitled Whor/ed l'Vit/tout Aimed, more interrogations into the breakdown of the concrete \world no on.
As when you leave a dream, a‘ter VIeWIng Conestake's kitchen sink-cum— sofa drama and Welch's melted world, it takes time to fours again o"- fhe real world. After a bit of a lull, -t :s good that Transmission has managed, once again, to push the mind’s focus butter (Susanna Beaumont)
Wolfgang Hanghofer
Edinburgh: Institut Francais d’Ecosse unilWed 14 Oct ac". s:-
t- ' ‘*-
Postal sacks aren’t what they used to be. Once they were made of good honest natural fibres; today they are a mix of goodness knows what plastic Off-shoots of the imtro—chemical industry.
That said, Wolfgang Hanghofer has successfully sourced the original thing. The Paris-based artist has painted panoramic Views of London, Vienna and Manhattan on coarse, brown postal sacks. in this show, he has turned his sights on Paris and the Parisian postal sack. Described as partially inspired by Monet and Van Gogh (hard to discern), the sacks display a mountainous overlay of oil paint. Apparently ZOO postal sacks absorbed a total of 600 kilos of paint.
There is an abundance of colour —- blue, yellow, red but don't expect Views of Montmarte or the Eiffel Tower Hanghofer’s \. iews are abstracted With occasional hints at figures and form Moreover they fail to give off even a whiff of Gallic air, (Susanna Beaumont)
Hometown
Fringe Gallery, Castlemilk, Glasgow, Um” 30 Sep -::=:-
Where did you grow up7 Where were you born7 In Hometown, seven non- native residents oi Glasgow explore the sentiment of haying a 'hor'netown'
ln Belinda Gui li's Video piece 'Train Journey', the viewer is drawn into the life of Rome From a camera’s point of View, we stare unblinkinrily through a tram Window, tourinc; the streets The voiceover from an Italian film becomes the unackncnvledged drone of these surroundings.
ln Kevin Kelly's 'Nests’, beautiful and careful 19th century bird's-nest illustrations reflect the different contexts where home adapt to Each image l\ rtarrIeIl instance world outside
By contrast, the childhood images in Andrew \\’hitaker's 'Dear ‘.‘-ildrecl' are
like 'i~einoi:es saith
can exist and how \'.e envwnr‘n‘ents
Rititczi'.i‘--., Ir!
a simple re'rini‘dei‘ :‘l The
the elites arid details l‘fuiitzd His photographs exoke the atriiospheie 0‘ childhood
Many of the \.'.c>iks in Hornetm'zn recognise and reflect upon the experiences of life What gives people a sense of origin“ When you get back home, you'll want to dust down your photo With this show, homesickess is guaranteed
.Lindsay ?erth‘-
alhiifn
STAR RATlNGS -‘:- Outstanding :3: '1: 13'. RCCOnlfnende :1: .’-: VVOn'ih 8