INTERIOR DESIGN PEACOCKS AMONG THE RUINS
DCA, Dundee, until Sun 24 Jun 0..
DCA hosts Peacocks Among the Ruins. co-curated by Glasgow- based designers Timorous Beasties as part of the Six Cit/es design festival. The exhibition brings together a rich selection of contemporary design with antiquated textile pieces. many of which relate to Timorous Beasties‘ work and their display at the entrance of the exhibition. The predominant theme of the show is nature in design. a common one in the textiles industry.
.Juxtaposing new and old. the exhibition highlights the difference between designs and designers. hanging William Morris‘ arts and crafts wallpaper with Christopher Pearson's digital wallpaper. thus emphasising not only differences in materials but also contrasting modes of production. These comparisons are bridged in part by digital reproduction Sanderson print lampshades that lead you into the main exhibition space. thus directly linking two periods.
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The quirky. sometimes gimmicky contemporary designs, like ‘Horse Lamp'. a life-.si7ed polyester horse with a lamp coming out of its head. and Michael Sans' ‘Cuckoo Clock‘. a stuffed bird with an LED clock aoross its chest. appear as totems to a sense of humour. Nevertheless. they sit well with the other displays. which dabble in kitsch iconography while riding the crest of the wallpaper wave.
Tirnorous Beasties' curated selection of works explores the varied approaches to interior design. while keeping their anchor firmly hooked into tradition. This exhibition provides an interesting contrast to DCA's regular exhibition program. While the show is very much ab0ut ‘product', it manages to separate itself from the showroom to stand firm in the exhibition space.
(Steven Cairns)
Falling Abbey
SCULPTURE SARA BARKER Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 16 Jun 0000
Conceptual and perceptual reality fit like a Mobius strip, chasing and paralleling each other in the work of Glasgow-based sculptor Sara Barker. Her new installed sculptural works kick the over-stuffed theoretical baggage of Minimalism about the gallery, in a series of intellectually playful compositions that at first appear very slight indeed, but slowly reveal a seriously capricious foundation that keeps the viewer on their toes.
The sculptures in the first gallery space lure the viewer into the classical perspectival cone of vision; we feel compelled to face these flimsy wooden spars straight on. This position is enclosed by two ‘bracket’ shaped forms on the wall behind our heads, emphasising the fact that the field of vision is always framed, ideologically prefigured. The sculptures take on the structuralist sanctity of the minimalist grid, opening it back up to relativity, our subjectivity. Both Caro’s pompous and romantic abstractions and LeWitt’s conceptual starkness are parodied by off-cuts of stained cheap wood and cardboard. When you start
PAINTING HANNELINE VISNES Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, until Sat 7 Jul
Belgianborn, Glasgow-based artist Hanneline Visnes' paintings record the tension between abstraction and representation, pattern and spontaneity — a play of opposites that has come to characterise a slightly Cynical approach to postmodern painting. The desire to paint and a critique of this supposedly passe drive can be foond in compositions that bring together motifs from nature ~ birds and foliage ~ with abstract areas of paint that recall consuming fires or absorbing dark abysses. One opposite obliterates the other; both are ‘de-naturalised'.
In most of her paintings. Visnes leaves the under-painted background untouched so that the figures are flattened on top of the picture plane beneath an imaginary ‘objectifying' and distancing sheet of glass. ller analyses present pruned. choreographed. forced and unnatural vignettes of nature. with subjects (such as thrushes. hawks and peacocks) arranged in symmetrical and geometrical formations; repetition free/es the 'natural' movement of the birds and the composition, so that the benign innocence and beauty of her subjects is questioned. The term ‘uncanny’ is overused and rarely understood. but there is something ‘un- hoiiiely' about these swatches and samples of art as high- art wallpaper. Aspects of illustration, the decorative and
Visual Art
finding these objects aesthetically pleasing their ugliness mocks you; when you start reading them as theoretical statements, free from aesthetic consideration, something almost beautiful emerges. This is Barker’s greatest skill.
In the next room she continues this examination of the difference between an artistic (or conceptual) examination of space, with large cardboard rectilinear forms that frame nothing. Again, the viewer feels like they should stand straight in front of the work, only to find that this privileged position is barred by a pillar. We could go closer to the work (in the ritual of reception and viewing favoured by the abstract expressionist), but closer examination appears to reveal very little of what is usually understood to be artistic merit. Barker’s work catches us between two positions, presenting a parallax view that refuses to give up the whole truth.
One of the most successful sculptures in the show demonstrates all of Barker’s insights. ‘Falling Abbey’ is presented on a plinth of sorts, at the perfect height for seeing the work up close. As you circle this maquette of a monument to anti-art, the unchecked idealism that still bolsters most contemporary art crumbles before you. (Alexander Kennedy)
design, find their way into her work, with wild tendrils reduced to repeating patterns.
In recent work Visnes utilises hazy aureoles of colour to present her subjects on stark, flat mid-grounds. further emphasising the urge to stage and control nature. ‘Man- made' objects that represent nature have fOund their way into her compositions, as the myth of pristine nature retreats. (Alexander Kennedy)
24 May—7 .Jun 2007 THE LIST 85