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INSTALLATION BARBARA KRUGER Gallery of Modern Art, until Sun 25 Sep 000
Breaking news: the Kruger franchise comes to town. In the heart of Glasgow 3 gallery is lined ceiling to floor with newsprint wallpaper from the British press headlining violence against woman, prostitution, potential court reform and rape. ‘l’m miserable with you and lonely without you’ it sloganeers. Saturation colour, green and white words (did she know about football?) demand attention. ‘ENVY, LUST, POWER AND LOVE’ shout from the pillars, while the skylight windows whisper ‘Don’t beat me’, ‘Don’t bury me’. Statistics such as ‘92°/o women are unhappy with their looks’ are writ large.
This is the spectacle people come to see. The format - headlines, journalese, photos of doe-eyed victims - is a familiar one made by Barbara Kruger, a top ranking New York artist with a palette of wordplay, edits and cuts. So how should you read this room? As emotional highjacker, Kruger pulls the plug on answers and leaves you to make up your own mind.
She’s been doing it for years. These room installations are iconic. l-ler billboards (there is a new one in Glasgow’s Central Station flicking between the ads) are a signature. Her Glasgow visit began with an interest in Rule of Thumb, a 13-month programme of contemporary art events exploring human rights in relation to violence against women. Kruger sets up shop and - hey presto - you have a celebrity standing for the local cause. Understanding the capitalist world we live in, Kruger allows her work to buy into that status. She also infiltrates the market, selling mugs and T-shirts emblazoned with her slogans in the shop downstairs. Labels assure us that 10% of the profit goes to the cause. But who gets the rest? ls her merchandising ironic or just another buy with a twist? As feminism struggles to write a song which resonates with women of the 21 st century, Kruger’s mantra, tough and uncompromising though it is, may be just too like the very thing it rejects. (Alice Bain)
MIXED MEDIA ILANA HALPERIN: NOMADIC LANDMASS doggerfisher, Edinburgh, until 25 Jun 0000
In 1973 two very Significant things occurred — the artist liana Halper'n was born and a volcanic eruption in Iceland led to the formation 0‘ a volcanic cone. Random events to some perhaps. but Halperin COrdiaIIy invited her trends and family to the 30th birthday celebration of herself and the volcanic cone. The dociumentation 0‘ this Joint birthday and its interconnected events are the subject of her numerous drawings. photographs. video and s0und installation at the doggerfisher gallery.
StOryteIIing itself is not necessarily an art. but Haberin makes it hers. relishing the details that Create fascinating. twisting narratives that become so much more than. just a backdrop to her beautifully meticulous drai-lx‘gs. For Her. the natural world is not an environment we simply exist in. It is somethng that shapes Our experience. threatens our Survival and also Cultivates its own persoiial " stores. And Ha perin's careful labels don't IUSI dOCument the exhibits. but buiid stores around those involved in the work and make it relevant to us — ‘lvl'nera: Sample 18' :s not simply a shard of rock. but a discovery 'by Mike': the 'Dominick' sound nsta‘lat'On is not gust a stOry ab0ut enCOuntering polar bears at the Nerth Pole. but a captured voice of an explorer who is now missing and thought to have ‘ai'en under the ice who on an expedition. Fragile COnrleCtioiis between individuals and ozsparate narratives that connect her to natural events. chance encounters. births and deaths seen“ sometimes magical. delicate 0r fated. and Halperin draws us into her stories Wllh sophisticated wonder and Charm. llsla Leaver-Yam
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v. XED MEDlA ON THE WAY TO THE PEAK OF NORMAL The Embassy, Edinburgh, until Sun 29 May 00
Upon enterng the Embassy and being confronted with what appears to be a messily realistic mock-up of y0ur average student livmg room. the exhibition's dedication to ‘the remaking of lost Cultural artifacts' creates a nebula of uncertainty. Is this part of the show? Or Just the gallery assistants” corner to relax?
Named after a 1981 sclo album by Holger Czukay. a founding member of German art rock band Can. On the Way to the Peak of Normal can possiny be fOrgiven such confu5ions. Put together by MSC Contemporary Art and Art Theory students at Ed-nburgh Co'lege of Art. it's a documentary exercise relating to their earlier performance evening A Crack in the Cosmic Egg in February. Held at Cell 77 on Montgomery Street. the objective the" was to allow practitioners of alternative beliefs — Buddhists. psychics. herbal healers. Hare Krishnas. and so on — a 20 minute platform to express themselves. be it thrOugh discusson 0r perfOrmance.
This. then. is a record of that evening in physical form. On one wall hang photographs of eaCh of the guests during their presentation. while the centre of the fIOOr contains small nick-nacks atop pedestals in representation of the event: a kitsch ceramic Buddha. a beaded egg. an . . . inflatable tin of baked beans? Through in the second room, an uItraVioIet-Iit screening of film clips, from the fearsome to the silly, selected by all involved is in progress.
Despite pro‘essmg that 'it's not COmpletely unfathomable. the show's curatOrs have Created something not entirely meaningful beyond the artifiCial clutter of that a'ternat've believer's living room. In this film. the mise en scene seems to take precedence over the characters involved. (DaVid Pollock)