Visual Art
Reviews
INSTALLATION AND VIDEO SEAMUS HARAI'IAN AND BEDWYR WILLIAMS
Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, until 22 July 000
It’s all in a name. Which can be tough if your namesake is a lesser-known Arthurian Knight of the Round Table, Sir Bedivere. On one wall of the gallery, artist Bedwyr Williams tries to pin his title down to a list of alternative epithets he’s been called over the years: ‘Bed-wetter’, ‘Baldwin’, or simply ‘Bed’.
The Welshman maintains that pronouncing his name is like ‘mixing a good martini’. But far from the sophistication of either his titular chivalric heritage or various recipes for a first-class martini, his installation on the other side of the room is the detritus of a tacky cocktail bar. The poolside view is Cockburn Street, the bar and its respective stools impaled with mini paper umbrellas. Cocktail shakers balance precariously, one on top of the other, while ineffectual little plastic bayonets slice through flaccid, week-old olives. This is not the image of Welsh identity you’d imagine from the artist representing his country at last year’s Venice Biennale, but Williams isn’t interested in satisfying expectations. Rather, his artistic self-mythology and apparent Arthurian
92 THE LIST 22 Jun—6 Jul 2006
Seamus Harahan's surveillance footage
nationalistic legacy are portrayed as both ersatz and critical. Unfurled in the glorious paraphernalia of Club Tropicana, this Becks’ Futures nominee is set on making himself the centre of attention. Yet, beyond initial absurdity, Williams’ work is left curtailed, as if the artist needs space and work to get beyond mere visual gag. The boyish prankster attitude continues in the next room, where Seamus Harahan confronts nationalistic legacy to produce an altogether more ambivalent tone. Counterpointing Williams’ immediacy is Harahan’s grainy video surveillance footage, covertly shot over two years from his bedroom window overlooking a street in Belfast. Poppy jump cuts and an aggressive hip-hop soundtrack tend to obscure the real interest in the characters of the film: young boys drinking in the afternoon; bored children wandering the streets listlessly; the minutiae of everyday life drifting past. The film really begins to captivate, however, in its documentary moments. As the music changes to a more pensive pace and the cuts slow, the portrait qualities of the film take on a Kieslowskian vein with the kind of space for reflection all too short-lived in Harahan’s work and exposing the lack of sincerity in Williams’. (lsla Leaver-Yap)
PAINTING AND soul. i>iui2l ALEANA EGAN
artist. are left f'IounIerir‘g.
thought abOut nor felt it deeply.
Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Fri 7 Jul 00
LAURENCE ELLIOTT AND CARA TOLMIE - STUDIO SIX
Market Gallery. Glasgow. until Sat 17 Jun 00
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I<;Iinir-'<; riir ritru tit)". in the llifltilllllllllllii) rialli-n,’ at first (tl)[l~‘.ll more iiiiirni All). but .‘3()I)ll(‘l\' ah i not I)‘f(?()lllllfilffl‘.'.‘IIIItl(1(7()lllliil‘;"""' t or maturit. Ihif. installation at ti. iI‘ filéltltr. plinth anri TKJIIIiIIiI‘.‘ .-.ith a short I()i)l)(tII film at it:. ain Hit: IIII' is s'.‘.rr3r:t. WIIII slightly (:Iunk, swirl x’. undertones, featuring young writer artts s iiostiirinzi. Combarrid tr) ‘,"Iil:.li' work by Dana Martin this effort It ,i ,w. feeble and (I(?ll\£tIlV(} Hie-st: (LIIII(.|‘,"i‘. may seem harsh. but :;\,iiipatli\, vulgarises the \.’|(?‘.’.'(:l and iiatrnninwa the artist. (Alexander Kennedyi
Installation by Cara Tolmie
There is an interesting comment on Minimalism at the core of the second shun at Mary Man; by Alearta Egan. but it's difficult to decipher exactly what it is This i:, not the fault ot the ‘.’I(,“.'.’(3.’. but is based on a (IQFIHIII ambivalence '.‘/IIIIIII the avast, her work seems unsure of its aesthetic and its SIIDJOCI matter. This means, tl at the work on show Iaeks that most intangible of things 7- truth content, Vile. like the
The seulntures and paintings on show use non-art riiatr;rials lposters. plastic tarnaulin. as support. and are smothered in paint. gouache and PVA. The aritiart urge of much of the work is lessened by this process of lamination. the artist attempting to counter this gilding of the ever/day by whole/ind an abstract formal Ianuuage. drawing on geometry. text and a herinetir: S,’IIII)OIISITI that seems both haphazard and (LOHIFI‘.C(I. ‘Sz-ximrning Mat' acts like a doormat and a dr/inq board. ‘~.‘.’eI<;oming the galler, [ISITOI to an ()IIIGF‘HISE} unweleoming show, The artist has obv'ousli, looked at a lot of the work currently gracing our galleries but has neither
Installed pieces Such as Beautiful Stylish Woman' resemble Karla Black's anti- art anti- ‘eulptures. and ‘Girl Poster I' and 'Sea Woman Poster have something of Kate Danis' understanding of I‘NO’CIIIYIEHSIC‘F‘iaI space about them. but there is no sense of r'sk or intellectaal SYruggle within werks. iAlexander Kennedyi