DRAWING PAINTING INSTALLATION. PHOTOGRAPHY
PETER LIVERSIDGE: FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO
The Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 12 May-Thu 21 Jun 0000
The late German artist Martin Kippenberger famously said ‘a good artist has less time than ideas'. One imagines he would enjoy reading Peter Liversidge's endless lists of exhibition proposals; last summer he displayed 103 of them at the Ingleby Gallery. most too ridiculous to materialise (including constructing a death slide from Edinburgh Castle to the Scott Monument).
He is back this summer showing drawings. paintings and installations. But more interestingly this exhibition runs concurrently with Liversidge's solo show at Art Statements at Basel Art Fair in Switzerland. (Tue 12—Sun 17 Jun) and the two exhibitions have been linked. A dense Ingleby Gallery publication called 'Fair Proposals' presents all Liversidge's performance ideas for Basel Art Fair, ranging from the preposterous to the banal. Ideas
Winter drawing
include gathering spiders together in a booth to let them weave webs in it. making bespOKe beermats for Basel pubs advertising a fake beer called 'Snozzelscholsschen‘. and simply walking around the fair 'in a bit of a daze'. Liversidge will send photographs of realised performances to the Ingleby Gallery. which will be framed and hung in the corridor.
Other works on display reveal diversity; in the front room small shiny paintings of the North Montana Plains are surrounded by makeshift carcasses made from gloss painted scrap wood. roughly constructed fences and a stuffed hawk perched atop peering at us with wonder. Next door framed drawings of well known logos such as BlC. Lacoste and BMW spread around the room, echoing the wispery lightness of all his other work. They are appealingly immediate diSplays. avoiding gravitas or virtuosity. Yet they hang in the shadow of his ‘Fair Proposals'. which. even as typed ideas have a subtle humour and quiet sarcasm which should resonate on a much more personal level with the viewer. (Rosie Lesso)
FILM. DRAWING. SCULPTURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY
THE SAW SHOW: GROUP SHOW
Finn, 34 Elliot Road, Finnieston, Glasgow. RUN ENDED 0...
With 26 students and graduates (mostly from Glasgow School of Art) exhibiting new work, the old sawmill in Finnieston feels like an uncanny parody of an art college, the recurring nightmare of a degree show dragged from the cracked head of a freshly bloodied alumni. Outside, it’s a warm summer’s day, but inside it’s very dark indeed.
The gloom of the first floor is pierced with flickering light and funereal rumblings coming from the work of Andy Wake and Sigga Bjorg Sigurdardottir. Wake’s film ‘Trickster Cycle’ is one of the strongest pieces in the show, and is reminiscent of the work of Duncan Marquiss (who is thanked in the credits). ‘One time, all the noises met in one place. And I was there,’ choruses a legion of voices, as colour and lights throb and pour ominously from the screen. A racket from upstairs; someone is whaling as Jo Robertson’s organ is being thumped. And then a loud bang from behind black
DRAWING DAVID MUSGRAVE
Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow. until Sat 30 Jun
Visual Art
Manuela Gernedel
plastic sheeting - Kristian Koerner’s balloon is being burst in a shocking short film.
As things get a bit hysterical downstairs, the noise of footsteps upstairs act as a macabre lure. Past Keith Boadwee’s chopped-up porn on the stairway, you are drawn by light and the flickering tinsel blowing over a small stage (a few artists performed on the opening night). Leanne Coughlin has placed a pile of shark’s teeth next to a pretty music box on a bench near the window, and as you turn the small lever, the theme tune from Jaws is played slowly and sweetly. In the next room Manuela Gernedel sets the dark blue sky on fire in a scribbled seascape that’s one of the best paintings in the show.
The artists hope to have another show in the space later in the summer, to tease something new out of the three storey industrial space. It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the place, with its intoxicating fug of a hundred years of sweat and oil. The graffiti written all over the walls adds to the sense of unease: ‘Jinky he’s mad. Joe he’s mad. We’re both mad. Mad!’
(Alexander Kennedy)
Art examines the idea of semblance. even when it is created out of everyday objects and the apparently unmediated stuff of the everyday world. The recent work of David Musgrave continues this examination into the nature of reality. where ‘lived
life‘ is understood as eternal repetition with sometimes barely perceptible
differences taking place. This is translated into an analysis of representation and
media by the Lendon-based artist. who uses trompe I'oeil techniques to question fl hr the properties of the object represented. to conceal (and reveal) the limitations of g the materials he employs. and. therefore. to attempt to demonstrate the " fundamental illusory nature of reality itself. Heady stuff indeed. These theoretical concerns are demonstrated in drawrngs. paintings and soulptures that at first appear to be abstract configurations. whether billowmg chalky cloud-like forms or the unrelenting rigidity of the repeated horizontal line. in his ‘Televrsion' series. these lines are broken by the presence of a figure that at once occupies the surface and the inid-grOund. like a shape hovering on our TV set. The forms take 0n anthropomori)hic qualities. Stick figures with bulbous heads a
emerge. created out of hyper-real rei’)resentations (three dimensional 'sketches')
made out of twisted masking tape. then lllGllCUIOUSly rendered in paint or graphite. Musgrave's work has been exhibited Widely — wrth exhibitions wrth Art Now at Tate Britain and The British Art Show 5 — and his philosophical concerns continue
to deepen. The vertically bisected cartoon 'Snoopy' sculpture (entitled ‘Animal'.
Tape Golem No.3
1998) that he was once known for has almost died. (Alexander Kennedy)
f {)1 .Jun 700/ THE LIST 89