Visual Art—
ii! M. iNSiAl l A? ;< M. iii RIORMANCIE . i’RlNl. VIDH) GROUP SHOW - IN THE POEM ABOUT LOVE YOU DON’T WRITE THE WORD LOVE
CCA, Glasgow. until Sat 28 Jan
In the Poem About Love You Don ’t Write the Word Love brings together an impressive array of work from renowned artists and filmmakers such as Broodthaers, Warhol, Godard and Sekula, to 2004 Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller and a host of other contemporary names. Tanya Leighton, the curator, has assembled a fascinating and ambitious show, which might seem fragmented, but is informed by a strong thematic unity.
As with Like it Matters, the exhibition that preceded it at the CCA, In the Poem about Love . . . presents the work of contemporary artists in a dialogue with earlier critical practices. The specific theme of the show concerns a contrast between the (critical) image and visual culture, which is here identified with ‘spectacle’ and ideological systems. It has been suggested that modish theories of visual culture, which have informed the production and reception of much of the art included here, amount to a ‘denigration of vision’. In contrast to this view, In the Poem About Love . . .
94 THE LIST ' ‘Ti-a, (1/)
implies that opposition to mainstream spectacle need not mean renunciation of the pleasure of looking, but that we can look, enjoy and think at the same time. Two works in particular deal with these issues. Smithson and Holt’s 1969 ‘Swamp’ presents a disorientated/disorientating experience of trying to find one’s place in unfamiliar territory - an allegory for the fate of the viewer in much contemporary art? Alexander Kluge’s 1986 ‘The Blind Director’ attempts to activate the viewer’s critical faculties in the face of this disorientation by exposing cinema’s technical and semiotic apparatus. In the Poem About Love . . . - as its title suggests — proposes a poetic response to the oblique or disruptive strategies used by many artists in dealing with spectacular visuality. This poetic or aesthetic dimension is forcefully turned to political ends by contemporary artists included here, with Francois Bucher addressing Iraq, Ayreen Anastas, Avi Mograbi dealing with questions of representation in the context of Palestine and Bernadette Corporation reflecting on the anti-G8 protests in Genoa 2001. With film screenings, lectures and performances accompanying the exhibition, In the Poem About Love . . . promises to be one of this winter’s cultural high points. (Dominic Paterson)
INSIALLAT ION
JIGSAW (JEUX DE SOCIETE)
under the glass (lonie.
DRAWING
CHARLES AVERY - THE ISLANDS
Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, until Sat 17 Dec
Charles Avery possesses something rare — an etch-a-sketch imagination. His line drawings are suspended within vast white spaces. teetering into existence and haunted by a strange impermanence. Wait-like figures emerge from under his spidery-pencil touch. their details so delicate they look like they might fall away again with too rough handling. But the orchestrated simplicity of Avery's works on paper has always held the trappings of fine draughtsmanship. but for his latest solo show at Doggerfisher, his fine lines betray this passion for drawing. Though Avery lives and works in London his title. The Islanders. is not entirely exotic — he grew up on the Isle of Mull. But elements of finer fabrication are never absent. One work from 2004 resembles a figure whose head seems to explode into a fantastical graphite burst. entitled ‘As I look into space. I meet the eye of my creator. as she is watching me. as I am in her eye'. For Avery. then. the romantic sublime doesn't seem so very far away. But alongside his fictions rests an ascetic architectural and mathematical approach; in both his drawings and sculptures he deliberates upon space. and where his thin etchings might fit around the structure of it. Sculptural triangles within triangles. or frames within frames seem to fit endlessly into one another. Avery uses colour sparingly. if at all. instead relying on fantasies of ‘portraits of people who never existed'. and the scaffolding of his empirical universe. (lsla Leaver-Yap)
LUCILE DESAMORY LUCY MCKENZIE AND BIRGIT MEGERLE -
The Round Room, Talbot Rice Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 3 Dec O...
The tradition of artistic collaboration is booby-trapped with insrder stories of sex. swollen egos and artistic differences' leading to suitably uproarious results who knows what happens behind the scenes. and who cares’.> As long as the work shown is as forceful. witty and theatrically poised as that installed by lucile Desamory (from Brussels. now staying in Berlin).
l ucy MCKOll/IO (Glasgow) and Birgit Megerle (from Hamburg and living in Berlin) in the Round Room at the Talbot Rice Gallery. one shouldn't give a damn.
The artists have married their indivrdual concerns and sensibilities in order to Create something resembling a tableaux-vivant. with figures painted in different styles and on different materials perching. posing and gesticulating in and around the space. charging the little room wrth something frightfully fashionable. Style as fashion is usually more blandly expressed; it Is sublimated in art works. but here the artists luxuriate in the fetishisation of the once new. but now lvra nostalgia for things bohemian and 'modern') new again. Figures from an evening at a cabaret club in fin de siecle Berlin, the salon. the artist's studio and a character from Tintin meet
lhe lei)resentational styles on show reference cartoons and comics, public art murals and flimsy set designs. humble beginnings transcended thrOLigh sharp artistic volition and a Clever use of space. Somethings going on. but the relation is abstracted through two-dimensionality and the l'(-}(Zh(-)r(2h(-) figures. striking arch attitudes in paint. (Alexander Kennedy)