Visual Art
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REVIEW INSTALLATION CATHY WILKES: PRICES The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 6 Sep 0000
Cathy Wilkes is adept at creating compelling discomfort, making us look, and look again at queasy or disturbing phenomena in search of hidden meanings and narratives. In this exhibition she creates the singular mixed media installation, ‘Prices’, from a range of found objects. A disused supermarket desk, a cracked old basket, an empty fish tank and two small piles of red bricks are casually assembled around the central focus — a naked mannequin.
There is a hollow, abandoned air to the space, made all the more disturbing by the dirty, worn out state of the objects and their outdated 19705 style. But the drama is in the detail: scattered on the floor and checkout is a range of dirty bowls with spoons and the traces of food still in them; if this is the aftermath of some event, it appears to have finished just before we arrived. The trace of childhood presence is only minimally suggested here, in an empty honey jar and a small plastic wolf toy dropped as if in haste into a jar inside the fish tank. On the mannequin’s head in place
of a wig are a few wispy hairs, falling from her crown onto her shoulders like cobwebs. That the hairs seem to be real makes this image all the more disturbing, suggesting there was once living breathing female life in this frozen, de-personalised prop-woman.
Much of Wilkes’ practice is concerned with behavioural orders imposed on women, often informed by her own personal experiences. As the artist points out, the carefully selected objects in this exhibition, ‘relate more to the biological than the industrial.’
She adds: ‘Central to the feminine sphere is this notion of invisible labour, present in all aspects of everyday life yet kept outside of the systems of material and symbolic gratification.’ Wilkes’ feminine values and notions of female labour related to commodity evidently colour this installation and the selection of objects on display. Even so, the installation is still only partially conceptually cohesive. This enticing mock theatrical display compels viewers to peer into jars, fish tanks and cracks in the checkout, searching in vain for some clearer answers.
(Rosie Lesso)
REVIEW PAINTING iGROUP SHOWI
REVIEW PAINTING & SCULPTURE KARIN CHRISTIANSEN AND LYS HANSEN: THE OTHER SIDE - A DIALOGUE
Collins Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 16 Aug (closed Fri 18-Mon 21 Jul) 0..
Lou Reed had never been to Berlin before he wrote his doomed rock opera named after the then divided city. If he had. it might have been even bleaker than it is in its current concert revival. Karin Christiansen and Lys Hansen. on the other hand. know Berlin beyond the junkie romance. as a place of institutionalised brutality and a collective psyche split in two.
This summit meeting between Scotland-based Hansen and German- born Christiansen is a figurative look from both sides. now. at a past gone mad that should never be forgotten. Hansen work is dominated by busy. large-scale dreamscapes (one tellineg called 'Lust For Life') in which figures tumble. are beaten or kick out at their Oppressors. coloured deep red and purple like a bruise.
Christiansen‘s series of monochrome heads is more defined. less angled. and even more evocative of their subject. The oversized. monumental heads that dominate the room resemble ornamental African carvings more than anything European.
Christiansen and Hansen are from the generation Jeff Nuttall wrote about in his seminal analysis of the 19608 counter-cultural fallout. ‘Bomb Culture.‘ Already shell-shocked on both sides of the border. the move from guilt to rebellion to impassioned empathy is self-evident. Tellingly. too. both artists explore the possibility of new life born into the rubble. be it surviving against all odds or else strangled at birth. (Neil Cooper)
ALTERED STATES OF PAINT DCA, Dundee, until Sun 7 Sep .0000
DCA's excellent new exhibition manages to assail you before you even enter the gallery. thanks to Babiya Choudhry's vibrant wall painting that presents the show's title aCross the blade of an oversized knife. The exhibition's theme brings together psychedelia and that point in the late 60s when the hippy dream slipped into a dystopian nightmare. while exploring the sensory potential of painting — what that form can do and be.
Angela de la Cruz muddies the boundaries between painting and sculpture. One work lies broken on the floor covered by a white blanket. while the entrance to an auxiliary room is blocked by ‘Stuck'. a massive sheet of thickly painted canvas. Neil Clements similarly questions the nature of painting. with canvases based on the shapes of obsolete guitar designs. and his '(Full Stopl' paintings: two black canvases onto which a can of spray-baint has been applied. in situ judging by the drips and pools beneath each work. The narrative of Till Gerhard's paintings suggest creeping unease. and are disfigured by spray-painted blotches and sinister oozes of black paint. while Jutta Koether's epic painting 'Touch and Resist 5' reworks an art historical composition into a black apocalyptic nightmare.
This is clearly a curated show. as demonstrated by the exhibition's strong concept and the marshalling of works in the first room. but the artists have evidently had input. with several haVing created works especially for the exhibition. Despite showcasing very different styles. it all sits very comfortably together. with each artist more than holding their own. (Liz Shannon)
88 THE LIST 17-431 Jul 2008