Reviews
INSTALLATION
FIONA JARDINE: MOLTKE’S EYE
Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, until Sat 19 May 00
Although Fiona Jardine claims to be influenced by everything from TS Eliot's high literary Modernism to the pagan iconography of the Green Man (via Francis Rabelais. Brett Easton Ellis. Weiner Werkstatte. and Dagobert Peche among many others). it is difficult to find evidence of this enormously worthy and learned troupe in her new installation.
Well. this isn‘t totally correct — the pseudo-intellectual snobbery of Ellis can be felt. and this may be her intention. It is difficult to tease meaning from Jardine‘s installation. where so many influences. materials and approaches have been brought together to create a stylistic melange. Jardine reduces art to unrelated surfaces and forms (‘wallpaper'. a shimmering curtain material. painted polystyrene and the black and white photograph). to a pretty kind of nihilism. a decorative abyss.
The human figure becomes a black coloured ball-headed pointless nobody in the photographs. a puppet that sits. crouches. lies on mattresses and floors and hangs from a metal frame (a reference to Bacon's constructions that trapped his figures in a schematic mid-ground). How 'he' relates to the enormous peering face rendered in red wax. the green curtains. the minimalist ‘font' and cross—hatched patterned wallpaper is anyone‘s guess. Jardine's exhibition is a set for an untold stOry. a Lynchian lacuna that leaves the viewer indifferent. (Alexander Kennedy)
FILM AND PHOTOGRAPHY.
RODERICK BUCHANAN: HISTRIONICS Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Sun 28 Oct 0000
The new work by Glasgow-based artist Roderick Buchanan on show at GoMA tomes the viewer to face the anti-Christian hatred that some Catholics and Protestants still revel in in Scotland. His work is a response to the sectarian diVide that rips right through (usually the poorest) streets of Glasgow. streets where Loyalist and Republican bands march and sway. calling their supporters to the barricades. The relationship between music and war and spOrt and war is brought to a head by Buchanan. where we are reminded of the links with warfare of both ‘Cultural activities — music to rouse the troops and intimidate the enemy. and sport (in this case football) acting as a symbolic war between opposing tribes: Celtic and Rangers. Catholics and Protestants.
We enter the gallery and are met with portraits of these ‘heroes'. smiling and holding their team colours. their uniforms up to the camera. The exhilarating and intimidating sound of the pipe band somehow manages to pull you into the space. Two films showing the Black Skull Corps of Fife and Drum and the Parkhead Republican Flute Band (pictured) are shown next to each other. boys and men With probably more in common than not. split down the middle with hate. You forget how real this intolerance is. A gallery guard whistles along to the Black Skulls and stomps away. fuming. when the Parkhead boys begin their musical response. (Alexander Kennedy)
SCULPTURE AND WORK ON PAPER ALEX POLLARD: BLACK MARKS
Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, until Sat 2 Jun .00.
Major Tom’s a junkie, and John Wayne Gacy’s a serial killer - it’s no wonder that clowns get a bad rap these days, and that bozophobia is apparently running rife amongst the seemingly sanest of folk. But in Alex Pollard’s show at the Talbot Rice Gallery, he brings your attention back to the elegant image of the clown, Pierrot’s trademark kohl tear mixed with the monochrome make-up box of New Romanticism. This is Pollard’s first major show since representing Scotland at the 2005 Venice Biennale, and despite some criticism that he hasn’t filled quite enough of the double-floor Talbot Rice space, it actually seems that the works are displayed in a way that skims around the periphery of the space, nodding to the way that clowns have, throughout history, existed on the outer edges of the social norm.
The work ‘Nightscape’ is drawn onto the wall in black lipstick and eyeliner, black marks that have in some places been wiped away — becoming smudged
Visual Art
Clown
stains that could be recognised as failed attempts at masquerade by anyone who may have, at one time or another, carelessly brandished a mascara wand. A series of works entitled ‘Romo’s Getting Ready’ takes this idea a little further, with shards of fragmented eye pencils and geometric strokes of lipstick, which, when viewed from a distance, 90 to make up expressionist portraits - kind of a cross between Arcimboldo’s 16th century Renaissance portraits made up from vegetables and fruit, and those incredibly 19805 cosmetic tester cards that were all the rage with neon-blusher obsessed make-up artists. Of course, as you close in on these works, the illusion is shattered, and the faces fade into mere object assemblages.
Of all of the works in the show, perhaps the most striking are a collection of beautifully elegant black oil paintings - sombre silhouettes of clowns that are completely evocative of a post-punk ‘apocalypstick’ identity, and that completely bring to mind the stylishly tragic cabaret of the Thin White Duke, and the folly of human existence itself. There is indeed a lot going on under that thick panstick surface.
(Claire Mitchell)
‘ . ‘. ~TMELIS'I'91