Visual Art
REVIEW ""C' 2 “:4 53.1»
EJ MAJOR: TRY TO DO THINGS WE CAN ALL UNDERSTAND
Street Level, Glasgow, until Sat 10 May 0000
Photographs capture nothing. Portraits are even more successful at framing the absence at the core of subjectivity and how this can be signified through the image. This is neither as simple as it first appears, nor is this observation an attack on the power of photography to still manage to say something about our plight as absent and de-centred subjects. EJ Major, knows this, and has exhibited printed, film and photographic works at Street Level, images that attempt to deal with ‘the failure of language and its suggestive possibility.’
This is the London-based artist’s first exhibition in Glasgow, and continues a successful run of shows in the space. As part of Glasgow international, the work on show definitely has international significance, in that it should still manage to touch the post-humanist ‘soul' of every viewer, as well as being of a high enough aesthetic quality to be seen alongside many other of the worthies that the Gi will be presenting.
Major takes herself as subject matter in her work, even when the images are taken from films and other found sources. Little stories emerge when Major cuts, selects and arranges various images and words from her materials; unsaid dialogues between different characters in different films rise up. In the multiple monitor piece ‘Try to do things we all can understand', a selection of frozen frames from blockbuster films are presented: Bette Davis in Now Voyager or John Malkovitch in Dangerous Liaisons, tragic and heroic characters that have coloured the artist’s life. These images, alongside snippets of dialogue, make for difficult reading. Love, as we all feared, is dead.
Elsewhere we find reproductions of sometimes gleeful, sometimes dark scenes from Major’s Brownie album, with terrifying sentences from Faulkner's ‘As I Lay Dying’ that the artist had underlined when a teenager, overprinted onto the images. This again is uncomfortable. The gallery text tells us that the artist would occasionally lose the ability to speak during her teenage years: darkness, loneliness and emptiness occupies the core. (Alexander Kennedy)
Unresolved despite aids
REVIEW INSTALLATION. SCULPTURE AND PAINTINGS ENRICO DAVID: ULTRA PASTE Talbot Rice Gallery. Edinburgh, until Sat 10 May 00
It's hard to believe the eraculatory inference of the title of this exhibition is unintendtxl. because the whole purpose of 'Ultra Paste' (the show's key w0rkl seems to be a re-imagiriing of teenage sexual awakening as Viewed through the filter of the artist's memory
A r'oped‘off white cube sits in the centre of the gallery, its interior showrng a life- Sixed. grid-walled approximation of Davrd's youthful bedroom informed by a 1935 photo—collage by Picasso's muse Dora Maar. Next to a dimly-lit bed and alcove. can be glimpsed a collaged image of what we are told is the artist at l 1 years old. rubbing sexually against 'an exasperated old lady'. Yet the stated concert that the figures height r'e\eals his age is offset by the manly proportions of his body, while the 'old lady is a wooden manneguin in cruCified pose.
David's accompanying statement rather convolutedly plays on his and the work's relationship with nostalgia and memory. boldly pondering whether 'any of this wrll be delixered wrth enough clarity or adeguacy of intentions, either to myself or anyone else.’ The work suggests not. The force of structural consideration that David's words implies seems to be absent from a flimsin realised work.
Just as the abstract Junk sculptures of “Resolved through aids' and 'SodulatOr' are designed to reflect Arte Povera. so the 20-part getiache ‘play' of ‘Shitty tantrum' — a series of irreverent ston boards with no discernible narrative throughout — is far mere pleasingly representative of the artist's bad taste and magpie-like humour. particularly with amusmg titles such as 'The fake kidnap' and 'A theatre of the tolerated. On the whole, though. this is closer to the Emperor's new semen-stained clothes than any kind of ecstaSy. (David Pollock)
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REVIEW PAINTINGWORKS ON PAPER
FROM SICKERT TO GERTLER: MODERN BRITISH ART FROM BOXTED HOUSE
NGMA, Edinburgh, until Sun 22 Jun 0..
This exhibition celebrates the lives of Bobby and Natalie Bevan, whose I‘ssex home Boxted House contained numerous works by prorriinent 20th century modernists. It also showcases the work of Bobby's father. Robert Polliill Bevan, .i close assocmte of the Camden Town Group This exhibition has evrderilly been thoroughly researched (although more details could perhaps have been left to the catalogue) and features a wealth of information. situating the couple within a rich and complex artistic community.
Each gallery's display directly corresponds With a room in Boxted House, giying a sense of the paintings' original country house setting. particularly thanks to photographs of the artworks in situ. However, while it is interesting to see which works the couple chose for their personal rooms. the Juxtapositions created by these selections are not always especially illurriinating. Despite firie draughtsmanship. some of Bevan senior's landscape paintings feature a rather sugary palette. while further examples of work by his wrfe — also an artist — would have been welcome.
Paintings by Sickert. Gertler and their associates may prove to be the biggest draw. but vrsrtors should not neglect the collections fine works on paper, including powerful drawuigs by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska lalso look out for his sculptural pieces) and a Goya etching. Although Maggi Harnbling rerrierrrbered ‘the people and the gin more than the pictures’. this exhibition reinstates the art of Boxsted House to its rightful place. lLr/ Shannon)
Study from the Courtyard by Robert Buvfll