cor iAor PLUNDER: CULTURE AS MATERIAL
Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, Sun 2 Nov-Sun 11 Jan
Pirates and Vikings are better known for being pillagers. Artists create, don’t they? They wouldn’t rob, ransack and ruin. Rubbish - they're among the best at it, as this exhibition celebrates. The canny, revolutionary and, to coin an apt phrase, cutting- edge techniques of artistic raiders since collage was dreamed up in the 1920s are the focus of DCA’s latest exhibition, Plunder.
Sticking fragments of modern life like bus tickets and newspapers into an assembled montage was a way of exploring the overwhelming plethora of objects and information that were part of early 20th century living. From these rough, physical beginnings, collage evolved into an anarchic, playful, often shocking medium in which revered or sacred images could be usurped for satirical purpose, or profane objects inflated to grander designs. Think of Jamie Reid’s artwork for the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen. Our head of state, the ruling monarch, with a safety pin stuck through her nose. Lizzie the punk in the year of her silver jubilee.
And now, in an age in which we are increasingly bombarded with images, sounds and pictures, artists have
play with.
Vll)l O AFTER NATURE CCA, Glasgow, until Sun 30 Nov 0...
After Nature presents; three artists tackling ideas surrounding nature and the environment through the medium of video. Duncan Margurss opens with a brief. meditative piece with slowly >anning footage of a lumber yard. backed with a sombre country 8. western dirge. strun‘med by the artist.
Next comes Rachel Reupke's Infrastructure. a stunning. immersive sequence of hinted narratives shot on grainy monochrome DVD. The foui'»part piece is set in an airport. shipping terminal. train track and motorway. all in an Alpine setting. At each locale. dramas untold. The rhythmic movements of the transport network make the skittering human figures seem like interlopers invading some conspiratorial relationship between the guret choreography of machines at work and still mountains behind.
Clare 1 angan's Glass Hour. meanwhile. is a shifting sea of smoky effects and saturated colour. occasionally revealing snippets of a post-apocalyptic landscape.
After Nature might just as easily have been dubbed ‘After Cinenia'. All three artists have engaged With filmmaking practice as much as they consider man's place in his envrronrnent. and all three ((ESTXXLIHHy Reupkel have produced engrossing. involwng and affecting work in the cinematic tradition. You can keep your multiplex ~ the finest film is to be found in a gallery. (Jack Mottraml
Infrastructure by Rachel Reupke
Study for Gravity in Four Directions by Fred Tomaselli (detail) never had so much raw material to
‘It [collage] seems so alive today,’ says DCA’s curator Katrina Brown. ‘Not just with people like Jim Lambie and Sarah Lucas, who are using actual cut paper, but with video, film, television and music. There’s a rampant, audacious desire to raid the treasure chest of contemporary culture which I think is really exciting.’
It’s the visual equivalent of music
u l ‘
sampling in different sounds and tunes; of making something completely new while referencing back to the past - acknowledging that we and our culture are a big old amalgam of borrowing, echoing, expanding, mutating, reinventing - ever shifting and moving. As Shirley Bassey growls out on a Propeller Heads’ track, ‘lt’s all just a little bit of history repeating’. And so it is Shirley, but new every time. (Ruth Hedges)
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Work by Kevin Hutcheson
Mle;[)lv1l.DlA NEW WORK SCOTLAND PROGRAMME 1O Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 16 Nov .00
The tenth instalment of the New Work Scotland Programme features newcomer Kristian Korner and. in relative terms. an old hat of the contemporary Scottish art scene. Kevin Hutcheson. And in this case. new works best.
Korner's sculptural installation it) works kinetics. transferring energy from a recycled motor to a tyre which rotates a circular plane upon which rests a reservoir of dark water. Through the rippling membrane of this spinning liquid mirror. Korner urges us to reflect upon representation and the image we see. While the reflection inside the gallery and out may be altered. as a literal metaphor. the mechanisms changing this perception are made both visible and audible.
Kevin l-lutcheson presents a series of works. in drawrngs and collages. which echo the design format of maga/ines and posters: images that are so passe that any impact is lost on me. The sculptural work. similar to that shown last year at the l ruitmarket. has presence. A wooden shelf unit is tiled with pastel coloured books ends. but it is the pages. not the spines. that have been dyed With colour. Stacked in vertical and lateral grids. this work is a simple reflection on formalism. and although not new. it \.-voi'ks. iMatthew l learnr
Art
5 to see
TOBY PATERSON
1 . It’s all new. Hard on the heels of his recent show at the CCA (which wasn't exactly light on paintings. drawings and sculptures) the prolific Paterson is working on another batch of brand new work.
2. It’s different. The Modern Institute show is set to be on a smaller. more personal scale than recent Paterson stuff. Where past work has been directly inspired by specific buildings. places and architectural movements. the new show is an attempt to examine the process of building a personal iconography from immediate surroundings.
3. It’s an experiment. Paterson sees the show as a tentative step toward deveIOping two distinct strands in his work. one expansive and direct. the other intimate and leaning closer to the abshact
4. You get three artists for the price of one. Alongside the Paterson pieces. there will be a painting by Sam Prekop (perhaps better known as one quarter of indie luminaries the Sea and Cake) and a perspex relief by 508 artist Mary Martin. Apparently. these works hint at a clash between the romantic and the rigorous — Paterson sees the romance in Martin's mathematical structures and conversely reckons Prekop's pretty paintings are the result of a rigorous creative process.
5. There’s this structure thingy. Rather than, you know. hanging things on the walls. Paterson plans to fill the space at his disposal with a structure of some sort. As well as forming a showcase for his work and that of Prekop and Martin. this structure will be a hybrid landscape. drawn from Paterson‘s mental maps of Glasgow and London. with some imagined architecture thrown in for good measure. Which sounds pretty cool. no? (Jack Mottram)
I Toby Paterson '3 solo show Opens at the Modern Institute, G/asgow, Fri 37 Oct—Fri 28 Nov.
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