ART
Atelier van Lieshout: AVL Equipment
Glasgow: Transmission Gallery until Sat 2 Oct *iit
Where other contributors to Glasgow 1999 Year Of Architecture And Design might have submitted a nifty stainless steel coffee-maker, Joep Van Lieshout and his collaborators appear to have set up a micro-brewery. In place of the ultimate peppermill, how about the ultimate sawmill? if you're suffering from design fatigue, head for Transmission where the ideal home seems a little more complex than the latest edition of Elle Decoration.
Van Lieshout, who's based in Rotterdam. makes furniture and industrial equipment, but his work takes household objects into the realm of sculpture and metaphor. Like American artist Gregory Greene. there's an interest in do-it- yourself culture that is more Q and A, than B and Q.
Holland. of course, has a strong tradition of squatting and co- operative living with official attitudes swaying between tolerance and downright disapproval. The most sophisticated Amsterdam squats incorporated workspaces, galleries and restaurants as well as living accommodation. but many have not survived recent changes in the political climate. '
Notions of homespun self-sufficiency take on a sinister accent in the visuals that accompany Van Lieshout’s installation. A beautifully equipped kitchen scene seems like The Good Life: but why are there so many knives around. what‘s with the camouflage kit and the guns? A utopian paradise is actually a Waco-style compound, complete with outlook tower and tank. The tone is studioust ambiguous. As the recent gathering of the Kennedy clan reminded us, it's not only religious
Home improvements: Joep preparing pigfood
maniacs and right-wing militia who live in compounds,
but the rich and glamorous too.
While we all bandy around words like minimalism and functionalism, Van Lieshout’s work reminds us that functional objects aren't all smooth corners and polished steel, Functionalism actually looks far more like your disordered tool cupboard or your kitchen after the late night munchies, but there's not much of that in the interior decor magazines. (Moira Jeffrey)
which we find so seductive.
Olafur Eliasson takes position in Your Position Surrounded And Your Surroundings
Olafur Eliasson -
Dundee: Dundee Contemporary Arts until Sun 7 Nov *‘k‘k‘k
Two large internally lit lanterns silently rotate. They are a bit like outsize standard lamps, standing off-centre in Dundee‘s vast gallery space. Each lantern has a slender rectangular aperture through which, two bands of light are thrown out on to the gallery walls. These bands of light race around the walls, sometimes as intimate parallel lines, at others one band appears to accelerate and overtake the other. Save for these lanterns and the
78 TIIE U81 23 Sep-7 0a 1999
Positioned
play of light, the space is empty.
This is Berlin-based Olafur Eliasson's first solo show in Britain. Named Your Position Surrounded And Your Surroundings Positioned, it investigates Eliasson's interest in space and place. Here, the strips of light trace out the boundaries of the gallery. At the room’s end, the bands of light extend and mark out the triangular gables.
If you stand flat against one of the gallery walls, they will track you down. Let your imagination play and you could almost feel the menacing presence of a searchlight. Rabbit-like you are caught in the glare but this is
not just a spotlight but a light that illuminates the whole length of your body, like a centrifugal force emanating from the lanterns. You feel pinned to the wall.
There is something almost playful, even Heath Robinson, about Eliasson‘s work. You get the feeling he is endlessly curious about how we perceive, how we think about space and place. Eliasson offers us a wake-up call to our surroundings. In the two chamber-like spaces off the main gallery, we are reminded that there is a world outside. Tented with blue plastic, a window is set with various instruments: a barometer, a rainfall instrument, a humidity measure.
Outside there is a bright orange wind sock and a weather van. In the other chamber, Eliasson has inserted into the wall a large round lens which reflects in a little bit of the outside world, a
' building site and the River Tay beyond.
For Central Belt dwellers, this show should rouse movement to Dundee. Particularly as the DCA is also showing work by last year's Turner Prize shortlisted artist Tacita Dean, while downstairs in the Centre For Artists Books, there is a small but exquisite display of tomes by Richard Long. (Susanna Beaumont)
Fresh Paint
Glasgow: Gallery of Modern Art until Sun 4 Oct ****
Will recently appointed curators Victoria Hollows and Sean McGlashan inject a new energy into the Gallery Of Modern Art? Since its opening in
1996, GOMA has not been on the best of terms with many of Scotland's most significant artists. The gallery's seeming disregard for work by many of Glasgow's artists, who found themselves in demand elsewhere in the world, angered many, as did its hanging policy. But perhaps the institution is beginning to court a more favourable attitude to resolutely contemporary art.
Fresh Paint shows some of Britain's most interesting painters and is the first show to be staged at GOMA by Hollows and McGlashan. Paintings by Nicky Hoberman, Glenn Brown, James Rielly, Jason Brooks and others prove that the cry 'painting is dead’ is not only old hat but untrue. The works are drawn from the Frank Cohen collection and give a real sense of the diversity in contemporary painting. Brooks gives us up-close realism, Geraint Evans offers dead-pan realism, Rielly delivers painterly disturbance and Hoberman shows good honest ambiguity. Painting is alive and kicking.
(Susanna Beaumont)
Sarah by Jason Brooks
Building For Glasgow
Glasgow: Maryhill Community Central Halls until Wed 29 Sep; other venues until Sat 6 Nov fit
If you could make your own contribution to Glasgow 1999 Year Of Architecture And Design, what would it be? For around a year, in many of Glasgow’s public places, MIM Projects placed sweetie jars containing pens, postcards and the invitation to let your imagination run riot. Unconstrained by budgets, materials or even the laws of physics, members of the public were invited to design a building for Glasgow.
MIM Projects is an artist-led venture which is programming a series of six events across Glasgow throughout the autumn. Building For Glasgow is just one. The postcard proposals run from survival - a cardboard tent for the homeless - to a South Park theme store in the shape of a rather beleaguered and bleeding Kenny. The centrepiece is something that every wet West-Coaster will relate to: ‘something to keep the rain out’ - an inflatable cloud over George Square. (Moira Jeffrey)
I See listings for other venues.