ZOBOP forming part of Voidoid by Jim Lambie
Voidoid Glasgow. Transmission Gallery until Sat 30 we we
During the Renaissance, artists sought to bring people closer to God through the painting of gigantic ceiling frescoes In the 20th century, artists such as Jackson Pollock tried to wrench this Spiritual realm from the ceiling to the floor and back on to the wall. Now Jim Lambie, in a spirit of everyday vulgarisation, has finally wrestled it to the grOund. In what is a spectacularly ambitious act of workmanship, he and a team of assistants have covered the floor of Transmission with a multi- coloured, intoxicating pattern of garish, vrnyl strips.
Glasgow—bOrn Lambre is fresh back from a residency in Marseilles and, according to the TransmiSSion press release, he's appropriately 'tanned and urbane' for this, his first solo show, Vordoid. Like many contemporary artists, Lambie's piece, intentionally or
not, straddles and oscillates between the academically solid legacy of modernist formalism and a more engaged concern wrth everyday cultural forms and habits.
While modernists could wax lyrical about the references to all-over, autonomous abstract artists such as Frank Stella, die-hard devotees of hallucinogenic drugs could cite Lambie’s psychedelic pattern as lift pad to storm heaven. While much high modernism was —- and still is i— superior about its lofty ambitions, Lambie’s show contains a humorous, implicit celebration of the more mundane pursuits of the down-aI-heel
Picasso, the self-aggrandising 'hero' of modernism, once said ’that no one wants to follow someone who walks with their eyes fixed on their feet‘. Lambie thankfully has no problem celebrating the aimless wanderings of the confusedly alienated or tripping prophet drop-out. (John Beagles)
Made In Scotland
Glasgow: School of Art until Fri 12 Feb
The journey from Garnethill to the design studios of Gianni Versace is an intriguing one, and it is one that Made In Scotland sets out to make - from Glasgow School of Art to the 'real world' of commercial design production and doubtless hard-nose competition working for big-name companies.
Work by a range of graduates is displayed, showmg numerous career paths In ceramics, Rosie Simmonds shows her work carried out for
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Recycle spin: bowl by One foot Taller part of the Made In Scotland exhibition
Wedgwood. In contrast, Tom Elliot and Jacki Alexander have set up a shop, Fireworks, while textiles graduates are geographically spread from London to Orkney. Design duo Natasha l~.IarshaIl and Neil Fullerton, under the name Sgurgee, are offering design solutions for the home, and Lucy Shaw has entered the glamour world of Versace Unfortunately the show includes no clues on the design process itself or how one graduate came to work on a new generation mobile handset for Nokia or another on websites for BT. That's one Journey that is left up to the imagination. (lvtoira Jeffrey)
Agnes Thurnauer
Edinburgh: lnstitut Francais d'Ecosse until Sat 30 Jan were Agnes Thurnauer exposes her naked body. The curve of her backside, the silhouette of her torso, a full frontal. Intimate and lacking in any self- consciousness, Thurnauer’s photographs are, one guesses, explorations into the female nude.
Next to each photograph of flesh are paintings. Or, more accurately, bare stretches of canvas With the occasional , daub of paint. The tension is set - the paintings echo the photographs. A curl of paint, a curVing body. A flesh- r’ toned canvas, real flesh.
Thurnauer just manages to carry it off. What could be unbearably crass ~ a s0phistication of the bowl of fruit syndrome — is in fact guretly engaging. (Susanna Beaumont)
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Délibérément (detail) by Agnes Thurnauer
Peter Greenaway Edinburgh: Talbot Rice Gallery until Sat 20 Feb e s» 2*:
Peter Greenaway’s The Falls
Peter Greenaway’s name will be familiar to many as a master filmmaker of such coolly stylish and enigmatic films as The Draughtsman’s Contract and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover. In fact Greenaway started his working life as an artist and has since expanded into opera, film, novels, installations and curating exhibitions. This retrospective is an opportunity to see how » and if — his paintings relate to NS work in film and vice versa.
Covering 35 years of Greenaway's investigations into the workings of images and words. the exhibition explores and explodes the everyday tools of communication and imagery at our disposal: the alphabet, numbers, signs, maps and grids, through to taxonomies and colour codes. There is a constant quotation of both the Visual and the literal, be it old master paintings, myth, film or literature Photographs of rriagazine cut-outs are added as collage with numbers and words thrown in
The strength and weakness of both the artist and the exhibition are thei.r ambition So much is covered and so many ideas struggle for supremacy that much can be lost between artist and audience. One feels that the importance of these paintings is as a medium for Greenaway to pin down and explore themes that cannot be contained in language alone. The paintings are difficult yet unashamed. The figure of Icarus could be a fitting motif for the artist — ambitious and daring but ultimately flying to close to the Sun. Soaring success and plunging failure can both to be admired. (William Silk)
Johanne Helard & Stefanie Bourne Glasgow: lntermedia Gallery until Sun 24 Jan a wk
This Jornt show between two longstanding friends ~- one practising in Glasgow, the other in the artists' native France » features photographic work, constructions and sculptural objects ‘.‘v'il!( Ii collaborate in an exploration of geography
Helard’s photographs are the result of excursions into the NOr'mandy forest, including night-time trips by torchlight. In the centre of the forest she pauses, Your eyes become accustomed to the darkness as you follow the flashlight of your mvrsible guide Here the boundaries between dream and reality are dissolved, location and dislocation coincide,
Bourne's work uses local resources, the ’necessities' of milk and coal, She uses the mineral as a pigment and to form building bricks and sculpted vessels. Her work Glasgow Pudd/e, made from carved coal and poured pewter, creates a literal path to the highlight of the exhibition a building constructed from resin and seaweed, In from within (Mona Jeffrey)