Visual Art
PHOTOGRAPHY I j j CATRIONA GRANT - THE The Collective EXAMINATION ROOM Pamela So Street Level, Glasgow, until Sat 12
Nov 0..
Catriona Grant's The Exam/nation Room is a series that reveals the relationship between the institutional and the individual. investigating our emotional responses to those inevitable interactions with public institutions. Each of the large photographic prints shown was shot in an abandoned hospital. There are dingy bedrooms. cold kitchens and spartan waiting rooms. at once familiar and alien. as such spaces are. And in each of these deserted rooms is a figure: female. naked. her back facing the camera. Some lie curled in the foetal position. others sit wearin waiting. others stand still. as if anticipating instruction. All are not quite there. rendered transparent by long expOSures.
At first it seems that Grant has simply filled up a spooky place with the spectres we expect. but her repeated images offer much more than this. There is a real evocation in these photographs of that peculiar dehumanising aspect familiar to anyone who has spent time on a hospital ward. where people are turned into broken objects to be evaluated and repaired. and are grateful. too. to be sub8umed into the website which proves a fruitful experience and is cool comfort of a bureaucratic well worth looking at in the comfort of your own process. home.
There is also a strong sense that the Downstairs there are two films that are both worth
figures Grant shows us — a pregnant Stills, Edinburgh, until Fri 18 Nov .. watching. ‘Zourouni’ by Leena Nammari is a ‘film- woman perched on the edge of a postcard’ depicting scenes from her homeland of bath. another stalled on a stairway — Ricochet brings together artworks by four artists, six Palestine. At one point, three sheep break out from are waiting. for help. perhaps. or to trainees (who have worked with the artists over nine the pack and the voiceover describes the perception hear bad news. their ghostliness months) and five Edinburgh-based community of the Palestinian nation as ‘serious, humourless, emblematic of the tarrying state. at groups (who have worked with both the artists and almost inhuman in their daily life and Iove’. This is a once static and dynamic. This is trainees) which ‘explore the UK’s many diverse poignant piece, which attempts to address some of powerful. quietly insightful stuff. talking cultures’. The resulting mix of approaches is the effects of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. of near-universal experiences that are reminiscent of a jumble sale and as such can be an ‘Bon Voyage’ is a sumptuous short film made by often left unspoken. (Jack Mottram) incredibly disorientating experience for the viewer. Kapwani Kiwanga (one of the trainees who is, Upstairs Pamela So’s patterned wallpaper and a incidentally, a BAFTA nominee). It portrays the number of landscape collages by Heena Nadeem repetitive daily grind of a toilet warden in a train adorn the walls. Recognisable patterns and motifs station in Paris and over three minutes addresses have prominence in these works but unfortunately global issues of immigration, multiculturalism and they both fall flat of being anything more than pretty. racism by focusing in on one woman attempting to Chris Dooks’ piece sprawls unnecessarily around come to terms with her new place in life. ‘In Africa the gallery walls undermining the intrigue of the we may have little but compared to here we have a actual work. ‘The Tetralix Polyfaith Map of joie de vivre. Life in Paris, in Europe, is hard.’ It may Edinburgh’ is a tour based on the experience of the be short but this portrait is both poetic and political former physicist Erica Tetralix. There are MP3 and is a much-needed antidote to the rest of this players available for the hardy but there is also a uneven exhibition. (Anne-Marie Watson)
SCULPTURE INSTALLATION JIM LAMBIE - BYRDS Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Fri 11 Nov 0.
Jim Lambie's Byrds at Glasgow's Modern Institute is just that: a flock of big birds rendered in dripped paint. mirrored mosaic and handbags. You can twist the word this way and that — 'birds' of the feathered variety. the band the Byrds or the derogatory term for a group of women. now available for use via irony — but there is very little else beyond the pun. If you look past some of the gob-smacking showstoppers such as 'Bingo Wings' (pictured) and “Black Parrot' what you find is a tragicomic swansong to the Young British Art of the 903. In this way the work already looks strangely nostalgic. and deliberately stillborn.
The exhibition demonstrates a bold move towards the figurative. but by employing a ready- made of sons (ceramic whimsies). Lambie skilfully avoids embarrassing ‘expression'. The works make themselves immediately available to the appetites. which is always a characteristic of the kitsch that the artist clearly enjoys. There is a certain artistry in revelling in instant gratification. but after the initial impact one is left unmoved by pieces such as ‘Night Owl v Day Glo'.
The installation caters to the superficiality of the press at large (it looks good in glossy supplementS). but the Symbiotic relationship also exposes a weakness in the work. It may be claimed that Lambie‘s oeuvre is precisely about this deal with the devil and the moratonum on meaning. but this get—Out clause is ultimately unconvincing. (Alexander Kennedy)
3—1 7 Nov 2005 THE LIST 93