Visual Art '
REVle ARCHITECTURE GARETH HOSKINS ARCHITECTS m The Lighthouse, Glasgow, until Sun 2 Nov
For years, the temporary architecture exhibits at the Lighthouse always seemed to fall a little flat, too often burdened with fancy interactive displays, with too much insider jargon for the layman and too broad a sweep for the expert. Gareth Hoskins Architects 0-10 Years bucks that trend, offering a clear, concise overview of the development of an architectural practice, with models and texts set on a plinth designed, in what must have been an intriguing meta-project, by GHA.
GHA is the natural choice for this, the first instalment of the Lighthouse Architecture Series, an annual programme celebrating contemporary Scottish architectural practice. Gareth l-loskins, then a one-man operation, returned to Scotland in 1998, just in time for Glasgow 1999: UK City of Architecture and Design, the festival which begat the Lighthouse, and won the competition to design the Mackintosh Interpretation Centre in the new venue. Fast forward a decade, and GHA - now well-established - is behind the Lighthouse’s pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
In the intervening years, GHA has grown and developed an instantly recognisable style - heavy on the use of natural materials, with modernist boxes Ieavened by the use of curvilinear forms - and an approach that allows the practice to work on the smallest of scales, designing exhibitions such as this one, to the grandest, overseeing regeneration projects, as in the redevelopment of the 30-hectare Pacific Quay site in Glasgow.
That approach is explored here in groups of projects, dubbed ‘In Town’, ‘Edge of Town’, ‘Rural’, ‘Within these Walls’ and ‘Cityscape’, each section illustrated with plans, pristine models and some pleasingly rough-and- ready maquettes, created with card and tape to explore possible forms.
Ultimately, though, these discrete groups flow into one another, making it easy to grasp that, whether precisely placing the Culloden Battlefield Memorial Centre so as to conceal the car park from the archaeological site or working with the existing interior of the V&A to guide visitors through the museum’s new architecture galleries, GHA operates with a keen sensitivity to places and the people that occupy them, not only designing a space but, to quote Hoskins, ‘choreographing a journey’. (Jack Mottram)
Htvmt PRINTS SISTER CORITA: POWER UP 0000
Dundee Contemporary Arts Print Room, until Tue 4 Nov
If a sign points ‘Leftl', which way do you jump? For Sister Corita. radical 60s poster-maker and nun, the answer was obvious. This small exhibition, tucked away upstairs above the DCA bookshop. displays 15 of her bright. brash but not unsophisticated text-based silk-screened posters in an all too rare UK showing. While clearly of their time. beyond the yellow submarines. 'Handle With Care' badge-wearing sloganeering and vivid cartoon headlines are some big ideas which predate a world that would go similarly day-glo a decade later. Witness 'Workpower, Air Conditioner', which reimagines a now murky-looking American flag with quotes from the Book of John where stars and stripes used to be.
Modern day peaceniks could learn much from Sister Corita's subtle but unambiguous flourishes. The lettering‘s bold splurges of colour combined with scrawled-on epistles recall both Jules Feiffer's monochrome Nixon-era satires and Sergio Aragones' far groovier fare in DC Comics‘ 19703 post-acid rag. P/op.’ Where their take on what was left of American politics in light of an equally denuded counter-culture was laced with strung-out cynicism. Sister Corita kept the faith with a purer form of hippy idealism.
a: ‘ a,» PRINTS AND PAINTINGS 1 Not that she's naive in any way. ‘News Of The Week“ places two magazine pETER pRETSELL m ' covers from 1965, each depicting a scene from Vietnam. next to each other. Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh printmakers’ until Sat 25 Oct ' Given that particular war's fall-out, that one of the images is from Life. the word
- emblazoned in blood-red. is deeply ironic. Like the woman says. “Life Is A There's a light-hearted sense of joy and goodwill in these two parallel exhibitions ‘ Complicated Business.‘ Amen to that. (Neil Cooper)
celebrating the four-decade output of the late Peter Pretsell, who was both student and lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art and. appropriately enough, an enthusiastic exhibitions organiser. Upstairs in the sculpture court. his collages. sketches and thick-lined paintings have a cartoon-like energy and a refreshing economy, his work infused with a wry, humane sense of humour.
Aside from the display of his sketchbooks. the work falls into three broad categories. There are the coolly ironic paintings of 19708 domestic interiors in which modern functionalism contrasts with the ornate patterns of wallpaper and carpet design. Then there is the series of paintings of a dancing couple. the course black lines recalling Picasso with a thicker paintbrush, the splashes of colour reminiscent of Miro, adding up to an affectionate portrait of a couple lovingly locked together regardless of their human Iumpiness. Finally, there are the collages — dancing monochrome figures. strips of textile, magazine images — reconfiguring the visual world around us in happy celebration of the human form.
It’s up to you to decide whether they are beautiful, absurd, outlandish or contradictory. as the exhibition title has it, but those adjectives pretty much cover the ground of this feelgood show. The fun continues over at Edinburgh Printmakers (downstairs from the brilliantly bonkers cut-out anthropomorphism of f Helen Snell’s installation) where there's a small selection of Pretsell's bold primary : coloured prints which have a poster-paint immediacy and even more joie de ' vivre. (Mark Fisher)
96 THE LIST 16—30 Oct 2008