Deep In This Custard
Stirlingzihe Changing Room until Fri 17Mm***k
It looks like they’ve smeared the window with custard at the entrance to The Changing Room, but it's only the astute use of some yellow paint to get you in the mood for this group show. Like the home improvement TV programme Changing Rooms, the artists here combine the homely with the exotic through an enthusiastic use of televisual tricks, paint and particleboard.
Take Michael Wilkinson's striped wall paintings for example. He's taken a handful of shades from the fuschia end of the paint chart in an unashamed homage to TV home improver Lawrence
Deep in it: Getting high in custard
to make a point about conceptual art? He's also recreated his record collection in paint and board, allowing visitors to try and identify the obscure New York imports. Meanwhile, Fred Pederson has been taking a drill to some chipboard in true do-it-yourself style while Marcus Mitchell’s video looks at the way we see the countryside.
Torsten Lauschmann’s wry videos play on the way that, in a fast moving world, we often rely on the soundtrack to understand what’s going on. An ordinary car journey becomes Gran Turismo 2 if you add enough computer game noises. This is a show that’s probably stuffed full of art theory, but presented in the shiny Day-Glo packaging of every day life.
Llewellyn Bowen. Or is Wilkinson trying (Moira Jeffrey) \ \J‘x \ w. / ‘ 2 \J Q‘s.
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Dream on: The Yes No Quality Of Dreams by David Robilliard
Dream Machines
Dundee: Dundee Contemporary Arts until Sun 26 Mar vaHr
Much like a funfair, Dream Machines has you sauntering from one art 'sideshow' to another. Some bowl you over, others leave you feeling indifferent. A crowd gathered around another, prompts a quickening pace, while various wafting soundtracks rouse further curiosity.
On video you catch Gilbert And George sipping gin. As they drink, sitting in front of a large window, they slowly chant 'Gordon's makes us very drunk', to the music of Peer Gynt. Just over the way are Marina Abramovic's amethyst slippers. Put them on if you can. Elsewhere Dream Machines whirl. Constructed by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville from old record players and fitted out with Iightbulbs and lanterns, they endlessly
rotate, casting hypnotic shadows.
Curated by the artist Susan Hiller, Dream Machines brings together work dating from the 19205 to the present day by over 30 international artists. The work examines psychological extremes, hallucinations, dreams and drink. Jane and Louise Wilson are shown hypnotised. Adam Chodzko asks lighting designers how they would illuminate heaven. Kurt Schwitters recites a sound poem. Minerva Cuevas drinks tequila on video and gets drunk.
And most chillingly, in an enclosed space, is Douglas Gordon's 30 Second Text. A Iightbulb comes on, you read the wall text. After 30 seconds the light goes off. You learn that after decapitation, that this is the length of time that the human head will continue to respond to stimulation. Not all dreams are good ones. (Susanna Beaumont)
reviews ART
109, The Visual Elements Periodic Table
Glasgow: Gallery Of Modern Art until Sun Apr 1H”:
Art and science are sometimes soulmates, sometimes the most unlikely of bedfellows. Down in the basement of GOMA, there is something going on that has a definite whiff of the lab meets the art gallery. For a start before you even get down the stairs, you can hear Tom Lehrer singing practically the only comedy science show tune, The Periodic Table.
109 is a collaboration between interested parties (for example the Royal Society Of Chemistry) featuring images, sound and video. Essentially it takes the periodic table, that rather dry chart that hangs in every chemistry classroom and reinterprets it for the cyber era. There’s a fab website and an audiovisual presentation to persuade you of the fascination of elements from Actinium to Zirconium. Art it ain't, but, hell, it is about time the chemical generation buckled down and learnt about the properties of Rubidium. (Moira Jeffrey)
On the table: Hydrogen, still animation (D Murray Robertson
Metacity/Data Town Glasgow: The Lighthouse until Sun 23 Apr inrth
While we Brits still think the city of the future would probably involve the team from Changing Rooms and a lorry load of MDF, the Dutch architectural practice MVRDV tend to look at the bigger picture. Bigger as in absolutely enormous. They've torn up the rule book and the A to Z street map and tried to imagine what a city with as many inhabitants as the United States would require to survive.
Taking its cue from the current giants on the world map such as Mexico City and Sao Paolo, Metacity/Data Town is unlike any architectural exhibition you’ve seen before. There's a video guide to Glasgow, aerial film of some monster metropolises and a whole bunch of statistics to help you understand the implications of the worldwide phenomenon of urbanisation.
At the heart of the show is the computer model which the architects and their collaborators created by feeding in a whole load of statistics about energy consumption, waste and agriculture in the Netherlands. They’ve turned these into a virtual reality projection, that makes you feel you're living in the heart of an elaborate video game.
Cybercows graze on virtual fields. Forests are built in vertical layers like skyscrapers. The idea is to make you think about how we organise our lives and think hard about how we would organise things if we could start from scratch. The prospect leaves the imagination reeling. It looks like there's a lot more than MDF in the city of the future. (Moira Jeffrey)
Chinese Paintin s From The Shang ai Museum Collection
Edinburgh: Royal Museum until Sun 21 May **‘*
There is a definite sense of Zen-like calm. Large stones in various shades of grey are piled up to form borders that run along each of the gallery's walls. An occasional bench further along adds to an atmosphere which welcomes you to sit down and contemplate. On the walls hang scrolls and album leaves by artists working in Shanghai in the 19th and early 20th century.
This is the first occasion that work from the Shanghai Museum Collection has been shown in the UK. Yet for the most part, the paintings of landscapes, fruit and figures are less engaging than the gallery space itself. Perhaps after the vogue for bamboo Chinese scrolls in the 705, the originals seem familiar and none too exciting. A couple stand out such as Ren Yi’s Zhong Kui and Wu Jiayou's series entitled Women. Yet sadly the show has fallen victim of imitation breeds a little indifference. (Susanna Beaumont)
Going for gl: Godfish In Spring Water by Xugu
Z—l6 Mar 2000 THE U817!