DRAWINGS ROB CHURM
Sorcha Dallas Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 7 Apr
Crying roses. knitted clouds. bare lightbulbs. Japanese symbols and hand drawn texts are among the fantastical images found in Glasgow- based artist Rob Churm's surreal, layered monochromatic drawings. At the root of Churm’s works is a fascination with, and an attempt to recreate on paper. the dark atmospheres of the Glasgow bars and clubs he frequents at night with his band Park Attack, playing a three- stringed guitar while singing in a curious. shrill style. Churm's drawings play out like the fin de siecle of the Glasgow underground music scene. nostalgic and memorable abstracted moments from posters. and experiences of heady, hedonistic nights flipping up as if from nowhere on the page before melting into abstraction.
The images float through open space across the page, part raw energy and expression, demonstrating his virtuoso skills in both freedom and control, dexterities that one could also say are required for playing music. Of course, linking music and art is nothing new, ‘floating' forms in white space representing music adrift through the wide open space of a room. but Churm's imagery is too weird and dirty, too black and white. and too closely tied to an edgy and eclectic music scene within the city of Glasgow to be cliched. As one of this young artist's first solo shows this looks to be a compelling event — if we're lucky, he might even sing. (Rosie Lesso)
SCULPTURE
NICK EVANS: RATIONAL SLAB lvlary Mary, Glasgow, until sat 14 Apr 0000.
Nick Evans' last exhibition at Sorcha Dallas was one of the highlights of 2005. But the new work on show at Mary Mary, created after his enormously successful residency and exhibition at Tate St Ives in 2006, further develops many of the formal and philosophical ideas that he has been investigating for the last four years or so. These new sculptures betray a confidence of approach, revealing Evans as one of
Scotland's most talented sculptors.
Evans has always played with dichotomies in his work — geometric and curvilinear, the abstract and the organic — which creates a tension between the works when exhibited. That split could also be felt in Evans' praxis as an artist. where the theoretical explication of the work stood strongly but separately beside the sculptures themselves. But rather than the sculpture illustrating a theory, or a theory explaining a sculpture, the new work is more integrated. The work justifies itself.
This new found confidence can also be found in the scale of his work; no longer are they presented on or supported by plinths. Evans' ‘investigation into the horizontal‘, where fragmented then reconstructed forms could be read as inelegant supine figures hovering over metal frames, is further developed in his ‘Worm’ sculpture. The form, like a helix, spiralling backbone or metaphysical gyre. coils along the gallery floor, rising up as its colour moves from red and green to blue. This is sculpture as a slice of time, an anti-narrative abstract unit, a quantum worm hole.
The tall cast aluminium 'King' and ‘Queen' sculptures are the closest Evans gets to representation. Rough curved planes form shield-like bodies; limbs become units stacked on top of each other. These works continue his confident journey into abstraction, with bodies becoming scooped metal furrows, empty symbols; gutted
universals. (Alexander Kennedy)
PERFORMANCE BODY PARTS 3 RSA, Edinburgh, run ended .00
The essence of performance art is its unpredictability. From the medium’s rise in the 19605 and 705 with early shock tactics, such as artist Chris Burden’s infamous ‘Shoot’ where the artist was shot in the arm at close range, to work like Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’ where the audience snipped off bits of her clothes, the form relies on a certain alchemy of control and impulsiveness of its audience as much as the performer.
The Body Parts festival, now entering its third year, has already proved its ability to occasionally harness such a combination and, with a bigger audience than ever before, its latest programme hopes to reflect past success. But dogged by lateness, repeated technical errors, and ill health, the festival’s third
Figure Y
Visual Art
edition is clearly not above the unpredictable disasters of live art that undermine the strength of its performances.
Certainly, Michelle Horacek’s piece ‘Still/Desire’ embodies boldness, where the stripped and powdered artist performs a series of simple gestures that are profane and hypnotic. Alberta Whittle’s ‘Subversive Anthropology’ counters such mysticism with a sinister line-up of uniformed soldiers marching under the anti-exotic slogan of ‘pure mongrel’.
Shame, then, that Body Parts lacks any discussion or context of what contemporary performance art is, or what the festival is trying to do. While bringing together a wide number of performance practitioners, it seems a waste not to enter into a public debate, and a pity to undercut a medium that relies on the dialogue between artist and audience for progress. (lsla Leaver-Yap)
15—29 Mar 2007 THE LIST 89