www.list.co.uk/visualart
REViEW NEW MEDIA
ALT-W: NEW DIRECTIONS IN SCOTTISH DIGITAL CULTURE (GROUP SNOW)
CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 13 Sep 0”
Alt-w funds artists whose work engages with new technologies and the worldwide web. Featuring artworks by practitioners funded over the last eight years, this exhibition should be an embarrassment of riches. Yet, with such a heavy reliance on new media and interactivity, the show disappoints as much as it excites.
A website designed to show examples of web-based work by numerous artists is projected in the first room, yet, on the day I visited, the site appeared to be inactive, while an attempt to view Beverley Hood's film “Madame l', available as a free download onto your mobile phone via Bluetooth, was initially similarly frustrated.
Elsewhere, a digital ‘fly past‘ of the first battleship to be sunk during World War II is technically interesting but not particularly affecting as an artwork, while, unless you're already familiar with the story of the demonic possession of Christian Shaw, Donna Leishman's slow-to-load animated website will be unable to enlighten you. Works such as these raise questions as to whether these ideas are best expressed via new technologies.
Ironically, the show's most interesting works are concerned with processes and devices considered obsolete in the age of new media. Nicky Bird's album constructed from old photographs bought on eBay melds old and new technologies into a sensitive, multi-Iayered work, while Zoe Irvine's use of re- spooled, found audio tape is similarly worth dwelling over, offering the visitor the chance to record their own tape from the selection of audio material provided by the artist. (Liz Shannon)
Visual Art
REVIEW PAINTING. DRAWING AND PRINT
STEVEN CAMPBELL: WRETCHED STARS INSATIABLE HEAVEN NEW WORK 2006-5007 Glasgow Print Studio, until Sun 28 Sep; Glasgow School of Art, until Sat 11 Oct «00
Steven Campbell’s work may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s certainly powerful and affecting. Large-scale paintings assail the viewer with bright colours; paisley patterns merge with abstract designs and motifs borrowed from art history while Campbell’s intense personal symbolism is used to create strange and unsettling narratives featuring murderous man- children, flocks of birds and figures eerily emerging out of areas of abstraction. With titles such as ‘Baby Face Killer’ and ‘Psycho Rugs’ alongside a collection of portrait sketches inspired by contestants on The Apprentice, unusual subject matter is par for the course here.
Shown across two venues (the Mackintosh Gallery at the Glasgow School of Art and the Glasgow Print Studio) this exhibition consists of previously unseen work completed prior to the artist’s untimely death last summer, as well as a smattering of older prints and studies. As Campbell often created series’ of works, it is exciting to be able to follow the connections, and the development of the artist’s personal mythology, as you move from painting to painting.
The mass of colour, paint, narrative and symbolism on display may overwhelm some visitors, but for others it will form part of the attraction. It’s hard not to take a step back upon entering the more intimate space at the Glasgow Print Studio when confronted with Campbell’s uncanny work ‘Scratched out, it’s all in the wrists (self-portrait)’, which incorporates a near life-sized full-length portrait of the artist, surrounded by an other- worldly glow with an angel/devil holding horns above his head.
While the recent paintings may be the stars of the show, it’s worth spending time with some of the older artworks: pen and ink sketches relating to the life and work of Walt Whitman are beautifully and economically executed, while Campbell exactingly illustrates an acute sense of menace and foreboding in the ‘Rosslyn Experience’ woodcut.
Campbell’s legacy lies in this complete body of work, and these two exhibitions surely set the scene for a full-scale museum retrospective at some point in the future. Judging by the art on display here, despite his untimely death, Campbell’s star is still on the rise. (Liz Shannon)
L
Vii w Pop ART SISTER CORITA: POWER UP DCA Print Gallery, Dundee, Wed 17 Sep-Tue 4 Nov
Anti-war art is largely a samizdat operation, in which the means of production are seized via cheaply-made DIY posters and pamphlets. In the 19603 especially, pop art was imbued with a political context often left out of more hedonisticaIIy-inclined hagiographies. So it was with Sister Corita Kent, a Los Angeles-based Roman Catholic nun, whose text-led silkscreen works became iconic images of anti- Vietnam war activity. The small exhibition of her work that is about to move into Dundee Contemporary Arts Print Gallery, then, is a perfect companion piece to the A/tered States Of Paint show which has just closed in the main gallery.
“What she was doing was a precursor to punk and street art.‘ says Annis Fitzhugh, Print Studio director at DCA. ‘The way she was using photography with her own texts, and the way she used screen-printing technology was pretty mind- blowing. She was a contemporary of Andy Warhol. and some people say she was more adventurous, but where he was a self-publicist, she was a woman with political aims. whose primary interest was in education. Her work wasn't just about aesthetics.‘
This may explain why Sister Corita left the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1968, relocating to Boston until her death in 1986.
‘There's a whole movement of temporary art that she influenced,‘ says Fitzhugh. ‘The show's called Power Up. and in that way her work was all about spreading the message.‘ (Neil Cooper)
4—18 Sep 2008 THE LIST 95