VIDEO INSTALLATION
WAEL SHAWKY Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 31 Mar—Sat 21 Apr
Collective Gallery‘s exhibition program resumes with a solo show of work by Egypt born Wael Shawky. Shawky's work is multifarious but deals primarily with culture and religion. juxtaposing. comparing and contrasting one with the other.
Bearing a degree of cultural cynicism. his video and installation work presents works that have many cross-cultural references.
His location screening of. 'AI Aqsa Park' marks the opening of the exhibition. a monochrome animation of Jerusalem's 'Al Masjed Al Aqsa‘ mosque spinning on an axis. The work deals directly with a number of complex religious issues. while maintaining a beauty that does not cut the work off from a varied interpretation.
Shawky's work is concerned with encroaching capitalist influences. typified in his video “The Cave'. a film in the style of a news broadcast documenting the artist walking around a supermarket reciting a section of the Koran — scrolling English subtitles working as translator. Shawky uses the subtitle as a metaphor. in part. for the cross-cultural translations that the work deals with.
Shawky's meticulously constructed. culturally-hybrid works directly address the concepts of translation and the differences in their interpretation. The 'first in the UK' tag in this instance is not mere hype — it indeed has significance. The reception of Shawky's work in this country will add to and cultivate the complexity of his theoretically rich subject matter. (Steven Cairns)
Al Aqsa Park
DRAWING ROB CHURM
Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, until Tue 10 Apr .000
It isn‘t clear if the drawings by Rob Churm are automatic outpourings or skillfully composed. surreal sketches — it's more likely that the highly worked and patterned drawings by the Glasgow-based artist fall somewhere between the two.
Churm's mostly monocl'iromatic drawings perch precariously between. awkward extremes. like a tree growing out of the top of a derelict building — beguiling and attractive flora indeed. All of the 12 drawings on show contain representational elements that emerge out of geometric repeating patterns. checks. stripes or dots and dashes. Sometimes the drawings appear to be caught up in mini suggestive narratives. while. elsewhere. pattern making and instinct take over. In ‘lvlore. in the way of failure'. for example. a robot is rained on by a cloud of oil (or is it an obliterated speech bubble or a tree canopy?) as it stands in an unsteady mid—
ground.
In ‘It Becomes the Thing' we find one of the main themes in this exhibition. the exaggerated grotesque female form. At first this image could be mistaken for a Madonna and Child, with hands. cupped heads. breasts and haloes. On closer examination we find woman as Freudian 'Thing‘. Mother/Otl'ier. with similar figures appearing throughout the show. Churm's drawings knowingly play with these psychoanalytic tropes. but all the fetishistic lacy trimmings and meticulous pattern- making in the world can't ward off this castrating monster. (Alexander Kennedy)
Review
SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION MARTIN BOYCE: THAT BLOWS THROUGH
CONCRETE LEAVES The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Fri 30 Mar 0000.
There is a well documented shift in American art from the late 505 to the 705 with artists creating work that slots right into the machine that is the museum like a mass produced cog. Large, hard-edged paintings and minimalist armour-plated sculptures made detours through the foyers of multinational conglomerates, banks etc, before being deposited in a stark white room in an office block-like museum. Martin Boyce creates work that critiques this easy flow from the studio to the museum, with sculptural installations that turn the gallery space into the hall of an ‘international style’ apartment block or municipal entrance.
In the main gallery space, a large metal structure acts as a room divider, a temporary wall that would not look out of place in an open plan house from the 605. This elegant ribbon wall now becomes a thin barrier between the outside and the inside of a dwelling, where the distinction between both falls away (as in the
Visual Art
Untitled, 2007
designs of Modernist masters such as Mies and Le Corbusier). Brass wall plates just above the skirting board cover imaginary ventilation systems, and the cool spring air that ‘blows through concrete leaves’ outside is now air-conditioned - again the distinction between inside and out is reversed.
With the main source of lights removed from the gallery, the space is lit with four black rectilinear wall lamps, simplified Tatlin corner reliefs that now glow with an aura of functional fourth dimensional luminosity. In the smaller gallery two mask-like sculptures stare at the blank walls; their forms evoke the figurative work of Naum Gabo or Julia Gonzales, where ‘man-made’ materials maketh the man. The faces are supported by silver geometric frames, ornate structures that could act as successful works in their own right.
Boyce presents work that manages to appear both utopian and melancholic, drawing on a high Modernist aesthetic that seems very familiar, but is not ours. His work reminds us that Scotland does not have an early 20th century avant-garde tradition, but the artists working here at the beginning of the 21 st century are a force to be reckoned with. (Alexander Kennedy)
Detail of Untitled, 2007
2S) Mar—‘12 Apr 2007 THE LIST 89