PHOTOGRAPHY, SCULPTURE AND INSTALLATION ANNA BARRIBALL The Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 28 Oct «0
‘Untitled (Wallpaper)', Barriball's first drawing on display here, is a heavy-handed graphite rubbing on tracing paper recently taken from the Ingleby Gallery's wallpapered wall. This intimate relationship with the gallery is repeated, rubbings taken from the wood floor in ‘One Square Foot V' and the back door in “Untitled (Back Door)‘, creating rich, though emotionally detached drawings. Barriball's re- interpretation of ordinary surroundings or objects, via drawing or sculpture, runs throughout the exhibition. drawing attention to the ephemeral or seemingly inconsequential.
‘Escape ll' also salvages the used. small pieces of found ribbon tied together to form a deliberately wimpy. useless escape rope attached to the ceiling, coiling to the floor in a delicate pile like the remnants of a girlish childhood game. More powerful is ‘36 Breaths', found black and white 19208 photographs displayed as a tight group, each one tainted by a dollop of black ink. A seemingly simple idea becomes highly sinister; at times these ink splats seem like bombs falling from the sky onto a quiet old couple sunbathing in their deckchairs, or a lonely woman standing on a pier, others are reminiscent of enormous black dragonflies preying unseen on middle class youngsters in boats. While all Barriball's works have a subtle materiality, at times she veers close to ornamentation, but the haunting humour in ‘36 Breaths‘ is mysteriously evocative, revealing that she does indeed have a wicked side. (Rosie Lesso)
SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION
KEITH FARQUHAR -
DRUNKEN MARIA (14 UNITS)
Talbot Rice Gallery, the Round Room, University of Edinburgh, until Sat 9 Dec .0000
Pat Fisher, the curator at the Talbot Rice Gallery, has managed to squeeze even more space for the best of contemporary art out of the two galleries and ornate passageway that are at her disposal. This month Edinburgh-based artist Keith Farquhar expertly charges the Round Room with a monument to wine, women and song. Or rather, symbolic evidence of debauchery and a humorous cautionary tale about how these should not be mixed.
As the viewing subject enters the space from the Lucy McKenzie exhibition, a shoulder-height shelf juts into your line of vision, with seven large glasses towering above you, filled with faux chardonnay. These goblets appeared first at the Dada ’5 Boys exhibition at the Fruitmarket, but there were either too many or too few of them - the scale of the installation and the idea did not meet. Here, all obvious puns about Duchamp’s ‘Large Glass’ are also kept in check, becoming just one of the many connotations that the work invokes. They have also lost their awkward ‘transitional’ feel (earlier work was less obviously constructed, contrived).
The central glass copula is anchored to the floor with a phallic tube of cotton clothing, constructed out of girls’ Calvin Klein vest-tops and sewn together by the artist’s mum. This is more familiar Farquhar ten'itory. One imagines eternal scenes of quick disrobement, where arms reach up as the tops are pulled off, with the whole scene being repeated every wine-soaked weekend. Around the base of the glass-domed ceiling the words, ‘Drunken Maria - Don ’t Sleep - Sleeping Maria - Don’t Drink’ lean drunkenly to the right, italicised lyrics from 60s garage band The Monks. As you look up and try to read the lyric, the warning, you start to spin and smile.
The title of the installation refers to the units of alcohol that an ‘average female should drink’. Or should that be ‘is allowed to drink’ or ‘can drink’? The law, the guideline and the rule is crossed and confused, and the superego that internalises the command drunkenly shouts ‘Drink!’
(Alexander Kennedy).
Visual Art
INTERVIEW
EMPIRE OF THE SON
Estonian fashion photographer and artist Mark Redpere speaks to Alexander Kennedy about his new exhibition of video art in Glasgow's Tramway.
Alexander Kennedy Can you describe some of the work that will be on show and some of the main themes?
Mark Redpere The two videos that I'm showing involve my parents and myself. They are executed during the half year preceding the last Venice Biennale, 2005. ‘Shifting Focus' was made at a moment of extreme self-doubt — right after the selection committee had decided that I should be the one to represent Estonia in Venice. the very first time there was only one artist from Estonia in the show. So the piece is sort of confessional. But l was more concerned with the techniques of opening up the work, the sense of timing in the piece and the mechanisms of recording, editing and presenting the tensions. My mother, who also appears in the work, was not informed beforehand about what we would be discussing, so her reactions are totally spontaneous.
‘Voiceover' is basically my father's monologue about his feelings. visions and delusions (about the voices he hears) and my concern about that. When I asked him about this previously, at a very quiet moment he unexpectedly started to cry. leaving me totally shocked. So in this piece I ask him about that experience. When my father finally reached that point again in his story. history sort of repeated itself.
AK Did you make or change aspects of the work with the Tramway Space in mind?
MR No, the works were chosen by Lorraine Wilson from the ones she had previously seen. Ideally I prefer slightly smaller spaces than the Project Room (which is in fact a marvellous space) for these works.
AK Do you see a relationship between your previous job as fashion photographer and your role now, as an artist? How do these roles relate?
MR I'm much more interested in challenging myself in video these days when I work in galleries. but I continue working as a photographer for many Estonian magazines. Working in two fields gives me space to gather my thoughts in between active work in either of them.
I Mark Raidpere: Shifting Focus, Project Room, Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 79 Nov.
9- ifi Nov 7006 THE LIST 95