PORTRAIT PAINTING MOYNA FLANNIGAN: I’M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF
A fascinating world of fantasy 0...
A man wearing a pink suit jacket, a raspberry coloured shirt and stripey tie looks directly at the viewer. With piercing green eyes. his face heavily made up, he sports a blonde bob style wig. Do you wonder sometimes? is a fitting and pertinent title for the portrait. This whole exhibition makes you wonder.
Creating fictional portraits, drawn from memory and the imagination, Moyna Flannigan has created a fascinating world of fantasy. You experience a sense of intrusion as you are drawn into the portrait. In the series of watercolours, Nightshift, seven individuals stand in fancy party clothes: a feather boa, fluffy pink slippers, a leopard skin dress. The hairstyles range from the heavy fringe to the exquisitely coiffured. Pale faces with red rosy cheeks. Then you realise that these are in fact all men. Building up your own personal narrative about the characters, you begin to imagine their past and lifestyle.
Perhaps the most intriguing of the works is Toujours Ia meme chose. Painted in a grandiose, drawing room setting, a man reclines in a armchair. Employing vivid colours, the face is again heavily made up. Orange cheeks, thick black eyebrows, luscious lips and white-blonde long hair, he is dressed in curious Hansel and Gretel type attire. In pink rubber gloves. he holds a yellow duster. It‘s almost as though we've caught him out.
Flannigan‘s portraits are both humorous and disturbing at the same time. Blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy, they leave a lasting impression firmly imprinted on the mind. (Helen Monaghan)
I doggerfisher 558 77 70. until 29 Sep. free.
DESIGN MILESTONES & EVERGREENS: ARNE
JACOBSEN Iconic Danish design 00..
The seductive curves of Jacobson’s chairs
Untitled 2002
It is the summer of anniversaries. We've had Elvis. Peter Rabbit and now it's the turn of Danish design guru. Arne Jacobsen (1902-1971). Working across the span of this century, his architectural projects took on the breadth of cultural life. from early futuristic designs such as The House of the Future. 1929. replete with helicopter landing pad. through to large, complex projects like the Dansmarks Nationalbank. 1965.
Jacobsen's prolific work has led to an infiltration of his design into every facet of our lives from chairs. teaspoons. lights and tables. Cool minimalism of some lighting designs are contrasted by the seductive curves of his iconic chairs. The Tongue has a fantastic simple lick of a shape. modelled beautifully in this 503 chic pose. And later deSigns of the 603 evolve into a more generous luxury of form. The Egg is a seductress in itself. luring you into its soft lap. and the Swan has an elegance that explains their dual status as ‘film stars of art'.
The Danish Cultural Institute has presented a small selection of objects to greatest effect. with stylishly dCSlgnC‘d panels that put the objects or buildings into context. Photographs. reproductions of Jacobsen's sketch books and panels of text are worked into a patchwork of documentation; there has been a lot of care taken to explain and illustrate the impact of Jacobsen's work; it is a fitting tribute. (Ruth Hedges)
I The Danish Cultural Institute. 225 7 789. until 30 Aug. free.
GROUP; SHOW DIALOG 2
Site-specific art from the everyday .0.
Dialog 2 is Edinburgh College of Art's contribution to the Polish art on show at various venues around the city. Here eight artists have built site- specific work that has evolved mainly by appropriating everyday. cheap objects and turning them into art.
As you gingerly step through Barbara Kozlowska's string sculpture resting on Styrofoam blocks and find out about about plant biology when you view Zdzislaw Jurkiewicz‘s room of plants and sketches. you realise that Poland's economy doesn't allow for sharks to be killed or houses to be temporarily immortalised in plaster. However. an ingenious use of the everyday is Sofi Zezmer's mixture of bulbous and delicate hanging soulptures that cleverly disguise their origins as plastic pipes. wire. flyweights and shuttlecocks.
Piotr Jedrzejewski’s kinetic sculpture (above) and Sofi Zezmer’s wire piece
Moving up in scale is Tomasz Opania's colourful stairways to nowhere except a man eating fruit on TV: they‘re not worth the vertigo factor. Compared to the other exhibits. Piotr Jedrzejewski's kinetic soulptures are expensive toys where wheels turn and weights move up and down — great for the mechanically motivated. Dispensing with economies of scale is Ludwika Ogorzelec's large interwoven wooden sculpture that looks like a Blair Witch-style attempt at house building.
This is an economical show that relies heavily on audience good will and imagination. (Isabella Weir)
I Edinburgh College of Art, 227 6000. until 8 Sep. free.
22 Aug—5 Set) 2002 THE LIST FESTIVAL GUIDE 81