Locale
Edinburgh: City Art Centre, until Sat 19 Jun ‘9: a it
Just Like Daddy by Moyna Flannigan
The title gives the game away here. This group exhibition pulls together some of the best contemporary Edinburgh artists who’ve been burrowing around the small gallery Circun for the last few years and are starting to cross over bigtime. Spread
out over three floors, ten artists work in a variety of media to capture the post-election zeitgeist without ever forcing the issue.
While there’s no intention to slap on an all-encompassing theme, there does seem to be a definite spirit of optimism at play. This is typified by the polemic of Rose Frain’s Love, Work, Knowledge installation and by the picture-book idealism of Chad McCail’s Rich Men Give The Land Back To The People.
Elsewhere, there’s a more spiritually seductive tone. Callum Innes’s black, white and grey paintings work like a sedative, while Paul Carter’s nuclear fallout shelter is re-invented as the ultimate chill-out room infusmg its potentially bleak confines with a clubby ambience. Billy McCall’s Rosa offers up a herOic-looking film poster, complete With mythical reviews, only to shatter expectations by presenting footage of a sleeping baby that’s almost Warholian in its concentration on a fixed and solitary image. Kate Gray’s use of sound in her installation is likewise fused with a soporific quality.
With other work by Alan Johnston, Anne Bevan, Moyna Flannigan and Wendy McMurdo, as well as displays by Virus and another collective whose ranks are drawn from Edinburgh College of Art, this is one local where it’s well worth becoming a regular. (Neil Cooper)
Eating in style: Glasgow‘s Air Organic restaurant
Food, Design And Culture Glasgow: Kelvingrove until Sat 22 Aug
Food, both glorious and inglorious, forms the Sllb](.‘(_i of this big budget production from Glasgow 1999 Looking at design iii its broadest sense from rienetit modification of the tomato to the shiny surface of an Alessi kettle the exhibition rattles through the science, history, sooology and marketing of our daily bread
Starting With a photo essay by Martin Parr on the peCLiliar delights of Scotland 7 .inai‘ies of meat pies and pink l(lll() buns, all With the colour turned up and finishing With a futuristic Video I()()kll)(l like Steven
Berkoff having a bad spaghetti day, this is a n0isy and colourful ride. In- flight meals, wartime cookbooks, fashionable restaurants and the bleep of the supermarket checkout contribute to a well-pitched mix of subject matter and attention span.
Curated by Claire Catterall, who scored a recent success at London’s lCA With Stealing Beauty, the exhibition is accompanied by a glossy publication. Essays by Joanna Blythman (serious food writer) and Stephen Bayley (Millennium Dome dropout) are presented with entertaining visuals. Somehow I never tire of the baroque cliche that is the Fanny Craddock publiCity shot. Do have fun at this exhibition, jUSI try not to get run down by the sushi- bearing robot. (Mona Jeffrey)
. reviews ART
Davud Byrne
Glasgow: Lloyd Jerome Gallery until Thu 1 Jul *‘fir‘k‘k
David Byrne is a brilliant maverick, unwilling to rest on his laurels. Having made music that still sounds fresh and weird decades later, he has in recent years found time to return to his background in art and his lifelong compulsion to take photographs.
Better Living Through Chemistry is a bit of a coup for the Lloyd Jerome Gallery and proves that, if you just ask, sometimes you get. The exhibition combines many of Byrne's enduring themes: the strangeness of corporate life, the sinister poetry of pop psychology (’l’m okay, you’re okay’) and the inspirations and aspirations of suburbia.
As ever, the tone is hypnotic, ambiguous, seductive and ironic all at once. Glossy cibachromes, like giant credit cards, show the cliched landscapes you find on calendars — the sunset, the alpine scenes and the tropical beach. Each is overlaid by an image of drug paraphernalia — a hypodermic needle, 3 rolled bank note — and accompanied by the kind of compelling but meaningless text you find in motivational literature. Corporate blandness and unquestioning, chemical consolation might Just be two sides of the same coin, The Litt/e Book Of Calm is in fact The Little Book Of Dead Calm, and it might just suck. (Mona Jeffrey)
Phonomena Glasgow: lntermedia Gallery-mil Fri 21 May Mme
Phonomena: art of noise
Phonomena — A Site Of Sound is the result of a three-month collaboration between artists Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, Dan Norton, Tabatha Andrews and Holger Mohaupt, based on their shared interest in site, sound and the human body.
The project has produced a number of works where objects and people are detached from their original 50und context, or where sound is symbolised. A large letter ‘O’ is torn from a roll of paper, a label on a balloon reads ’cough’, a huge caber lies on display. On the wall opposne is a small black and white photograph of the caber’s previous owner holding it aloft. This documentation connects the piece of wood to an absent act of exertion, of Creating sound.
In the back room of the gallery, a tiny screen in the floor reveals a series of troubling Video scenarios There is no soundtrack, but those watching begin to ask questions aloud among themselves. ’ls it a man or a woman?’ ’What is she waiting for?’ ‘Why does nobody stop?’ UnWittingly we add natural sounds to the store of imagined and manipulated SOUndS already present in the exhibition. (Sarah Lowndes)
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Sounds Of Grass
Glasgow: Transmission until Sat 29 May 3%“ 99-
Sounds Of Grass is a collaborative show by artists Hayley and Sue Tompkins. Although the sisters regularly work together Within the five-piece art collective Elizabeth go, this show is a rare opportunity to see them collaborate with one another.
The white cube of the TransmISSion space has been reworked with a diagonal chipboard partition and squares of hessran sackcloth are loosely hung over the walls. Elsewhere, there are a number of colourful and exact wall paintings, a display of painted eggs and a hanging group of magazme pages that have been crumpled in the palm of the hand until they assume a soft and Shiny form, like leaves.
The gallery floor is painted black and dust has been left unswept in one corner. Over time, varied footprints leave their mark On the floor lies a hessian square that has been stitched With a neon pink seam At one corner, a glass of orange water sits. The combination of such vwrd, preCIse details with spontaneous style results in a show that fits together With unusual charm (Sarah Lowndes)
Detail from Hayley Tompkins' Lo Religion
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