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Visual Art
REVIEW PAINTING
IAIN HETHERINGTON: DIVERSIFIED CULTURAL WORKERS Marv Mausjawmsat ago" 2-.
Using a combination of abstract and realist painting techniques, lain Hetherington’s new exhibition presents an intriguing twist on the idea of the painted portrait. These new works build on themes explored in paintings he exhibited last year: large—scale works depicting groups of young men wearing Burberry baseball caps enacting ‘revolutionary' activities, apparently drawn from art historical sources. The figures’ faces were completely abstracted: constructed from dabs of rich, bright, often eye-popping colour with only their headgear depicted realistically.
The works in Hetherington's new exhibition each focus upon a single figure, rendered in a traditional portrait format. While Hetherington has maintained his abstract/realist style of depiction, the baseball caps now feature the insignia of the New York Yankees and his subjects sport gold chains and the odd Swarovski crystal. The reasoning behind this switch to hip hop culture is unclear, although, as before, this is a style of streetwear stereotypically sported by disaffected young men. An element of menace can be located in the paintings; the figures often appear to emerge out of the dark, while in one painting the subject's head appears to be on fire.
Although ‘Glass of Absinthe’ (based on a 1914 sculpture by Picasso of the same name) sits oddly alongside the rest of the show, it is perhaps the painting which best expresses the range of themes Hetherington attempts to explore. While it may be debatable whether these paintings truly articulate Hetherington’s ideas, they represent an interesting expansion on his theme.
(Liz Shannon)
RE‘Vle DRAWING, SCULPTURE 8. FILM LUCY SKAER
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until Wed 9 Jul mom
Looking at Skaer’s black drawings is like watching someone trapped under a thick sheet of ice. Admittedly, the likelihood of ever having witnessed such a death is rare, but the image is still easily recalled, fuelled by horror films set on frozen lakes. The newsworthy subjects of Skaer's large— scale works — all taken from reproduced sources — are given a similar treatment to the drawings. A battleship, stampeding horse and giant wave are all placated by her dark ink and heavy pattern, their impurities glazed, their traumas silenced.
Skaer's move to sculpture signals a burgeoning interest in the decorative. Upstairs in the gallery, an exquisite pair of mother of pearl hands is inlaid upon an antique table, and sits in relation to both a video of Surrealist Leonora Carrington and a wooden wheel that’s cracked open to reveal the tiny silhouette of a rioting mob. Each of these subjects is fixed by its mode of representation, most notably Leonora, shrunk, muted and pinned to the wall by the churning projector. Seduced by the craftsmanship and glittering art historical touchstone, it dawns on the viewer that Skaer’s sculptural subjects are displayed like a case of colonial curiosities.
The artist’s heavily signposted interest in ‘symbolism and actuality’ is an investigation that would have been equally at home 20 years ago. Yet. while striking. this isn't the most memorable aspect of Skaer's ouevre. The success of this exhibition lies in its menacing ability to inflict upon the viewer a mothball itch and a lingering aftertaste of unease. (Rosalie Doubal)
REVEEW PAINTING. SCUL PTURF LOUISE BOURGEOIS: NATURE STUDY lnverleith House, Edinburgh, until Sun 6 Jul one
It’s a weekday lunchtime in spring and the Royal Botanic Garden is teeming with new life. Mothers push buggies, primary school children dig into the earth and the plants are a riot of blossom and flower. It’s no different in Inverleith House where the 96-year-old Louise Bourgeois is celebrating the wonder of human life in all its messy, unforgiving glory.
To see her fertile exhibition of painting and sculpture, you have first to take in a display of botanical teaching diagrams owned and commissioned by Hutton Balfour, the Edinburgh—born plant expert who spent 34 years as regius keeper of the gardens in the mid-19th century. Attributed to painters RK Greville and John Sadler, the large illustrations of bulbous fruits in delicate
turquoise, pink and green burst with the kind of bountiful reproductive energy rarely found in the classroom.
This botanical foreplay charges us up for the fecundity of Bourgeois’ big blotchy paintings. Using broad, cartoon-like paint strokes in pink, she repeats the image of a mother’s breasts, irregularly shaped, life giving and as bulbous as Balfour’s plants. Hungrily reaching for the nipple, the cruder outlined baby is all mouth and neediness, creating pictures that are as unsentimental about the gooey realities of childbirth as they are celebratory of the human life force.
Complementing the pictures are three sculptures - a foetus cocooned in a net, a cloth doll giving birth and a figure that’s half-woman half-plant — all justifying the generous slogan above the entrance: ‘I still believe in miracles.’ (Mark Fisher)
‘) 10 Jun 7008 THE LIST 103