Moment
Dundee: Dundee Contemporary Arts, Sat 1 Apr—Sat 29 May.
We are not supposed to be very good at 'relishing the moment'. In an age of constant dashing and darting, even footwear smacks of the need to hurry. Do half the population wear trainers in the name of fashion or to be at the ready for a quick sprint to their next appointment? And what is the most frequently heard gripe of the modern age if not the complaint about a lack of time? Yet even at leisure we're restless. We channel- hop our way through an evening in front of the television.
DCA’s Moment is out to try and make us slow down, give us a pause for thought. It brings together work by eight international artists who in various ways capture the moment. Curated by the DCA’s Katrina Brown, it is not a tirade against the modern age more an antidote to it. 'A moment is a period of time, but not a definite period of time, unlike a minute, a second or an hour,’ says Brown. 'Here we want people to enjoy the sensation of time passing. '
Amsterdam artist, Marijke van Warmerdam has filmed five small aeroplanes travelling through the sky in an endless loop. They leave tail-like trails of whiteness that slowly melt into the atmosphere. And time passes as the planes gently cruise the skies. Beat Streuli, on the other hand, has frozen an event in time. The Dusseldorf artist took photographs a few years back of crowds at Scotland's annual music festival, T in the Park. People standing, people chatting, people moving, people watching. Streuli has then translated these crowd scenes onto wallpaper which is to be pasted on to the walls of one of the galleries. 'You'll be able to explore the
A still from lgor and Svetlana Kopystlansky's Incident, focusing on the detritus of a
fast-moving world
images,’ says Brown. 'You can negotiate the space and be intrigued.’
More mundane, but nonetheless poignant, is work by New York artists Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky. They have filmed discarded objects and rubbish on the streets of Chelsea. Buffeted around by the wind along pavements and up alleys, the camera just focuses on the detritus, not people, not buildings.
But if there is an occasion where we find ourselves lost in another time, it is usually at the cinema. In Remembering And Forgetting At The Same Time, the London-based Graham Gussin has recorded footage of people entering and leaving a cinema. They say there is no time like the present, but sometimes time allows an escape into another, cinematic, world.
(Susanna Beaumont)
He manages it. 292 clearly has no intentions of being the meeting-place for earnest scholars clambering inelegantly upon their aged hobby horses. Nor is it a case of dumbing down. This journal is about plain writing on topical subjects.
Rasheed Araeen consrders the case of New York’s Mayor Giuliani and Saatchi's Sensation exhibition which toured to the city last year. In an essay entitled ’Hello Giuliani, We Love You!’,
A detail of Chad McCail’s Alien Genital gracing the cover of an excellent new art
ART JOURNAL REVIEW 292
lookJn.
complacency is not going to get a
Araeen argues that Guiliani's philistine stance was a God send. The mayor famously criticised the show, particularly Chris Ofili’s work which incorporated elephant dung in a picture of the Virgin Mary, and threatened to withdraw city funding from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The result: miles of media coverage.
In another essay, Pavel BUChler, formerly head of fine art at Glasgow School of Art, now at Manchester Metropolitan University, writes under the title Bureauphi/ia: A Lost Case about our love/hate relationship with bureaucracy. And true to being a visual cultural journal, Duncan Petrie writes on the ’Economies And Aesthetics Of
magazine
Edinburgh Projects him *
Taking its name from the 292 years between 1707 and 1999, the time Scotland was without a parliament, this new Scottish journal of visual culture has made a timely arrival. With devolution achieved, Scotland has to be cautious. It mustn‘t doze off contentedly; critical debate must continue. And judging by 292, cultural
Edited by Andrew Patrizio of Edinburgh College Of Art, and forming part of Edinburgh Projects, 292 is, for starters, a thoroughly handsome journal. On the front cover is a detail of Alien Genital by the Edinburgh artist Chad McCail, inside are five sets of artist pages. What's more, Patrizio declares that 292 is about accessibility and clarity not exclusion and jargon.
New Scottish Cinema’ looking at the films Ratcatcher, Orphans and Gregory’s Two Girls.
And, as the saying goes, there's much, much more. (Susanna Beaumont) a Copies of 292 available from Edinburgh College Of Art, Lauriston Place, 0737 227 6042.
All'l'
Waves
Edinburgh: Patriothall Gallery until Sun 2 Apr it *
Waves brings together three artists who work in a variety of media, ranging from oil on canvas to light and sound. The work is united by a common exploration of the theme of water. The first gallery is occupied by Alan Shipway who exhibited at the recent Absolut Open at Edinburgh's Inverleith House. His paintings teeter on abstraction.
Further into the space, Betty Bastai has created a light and drawing installation in a corridor. Entitled Mapping Light it is inspired by the topography of Edinburgh and Porto in Portugal. Beyond are paintings and a sound piece by Robert Gillies. Yet separating the three artists into different areas of the gallery, almost as if each artist was having a solo show, is not entirely successful. The hanging could have been more imaginative. The highlight of the show is Shipway’s work which exhibits a definite verve. (Alex Pollard)
Alan Shipway's Water-Edge displaying
real verve
e.g. Sometime Instant
Glasgow: Transmission Gallery until 8 April it fir it it
e.g. Sometime Instant is a new project from radiotuesday that follows on from its Glasgow-based broadcast last summer and likewise the one from Helsinki earlier this year. The organisation has turned the Transmission space into a mini sound studio for the various participants to exploit. The project is not about objects, but events. There is no ’show' to speak of.
The gallery is still open for people to pop in and see what is going on. It's recommended that you do, if only to see the 'Doodle-Scanner-Chanter', an amazing machine constructed by Newcastle-based artist Paul Mulvihill which will ’read’ your doodles and convert them into sound.
There are also film screenings, talks and other events taking place both in and outside the gallery. Contact Transmission for an itinerary on 0141 552 4813. Its website, www.transmissiongallery.com/radiotue sday, will give details of key events taking place over the two weeks by artists and musicians such as James Mclardy, Life Without Buildings and Ian Balch.
What is on show of the project so far looks pretty interesting. (Alex Pollard)
30 Mar-l3 Apr 2000 THE U817?