www.list.co.uk/visualart
REVIEW SCULPTURE SARA BARKER: IMAGES Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sun 31 Jul ●●●●●
Wonky, freestanding structures fill the gallery space. Like aluminium skeletons stripped of all flesh, yet simultaneously waiting to be enshrouded with a sleek veneer, these objects sit on the fence between two and three-dimensional design. Their sketchy outlines appear like unyielding De Stijl paintings, layered with fading primary-tinted pastel hues, revealing their imperfections upon closer inspection. From a distance they seem stark, shy,
uncertain and sad, each angular line echoing similar characteristics perpendicular to the next. But step closer and the thinly painted surfaces become alive with textures, shades and colours, as if viewing something minute and mundane through a microscope to reveal the life of its undergrowth. Inches away a mixture of polyester resin, woodfiller, gouache paints and glue will infiltrate your nostrils. It is in the fine grains that little painterly compositions and narratives become active. Barker, who currently lives and works in Amsterdam, trained in painting and it is clearly in the layering and subtracting of painterly substances that she finds pleasure. However, these works are reliant on a contrasting backdrop to offset their true potential. The gallery’s office-like furnishings do not adequately provoke that dialogue, and these sparse frameworks remain stoic creatures, covered with the moss of their own tombstones.
While the individual pieces are appealing, their repetition causes them to lose power. There is a sameness to all the works and they struggle to transcend their cumulative cloning effect. (Talitha Kotzé)
Visual Art
REVIEW PERFORMATIVE ART CHICKS ON SPEED: DON’T ART, FASHION, MUSIC Dundee Contemporary Arts, until Sun 8 Aug ●●●●●
‘CREATE UNDER ALL DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES’ is one of the slogans on the large-scale banners that adorn the walls of globe-spanning riot grrrl art provocateurs Chicks on Speed’s first major UK solo show. A large-scale projection of ‘Fashion Archive’, a self-explanatory pose-striking pop video of COS’s all- female troupe adopting dressing-up-box mode, ushers you in through the gallery’s smaller space, while a makeshift stage cum catwalk dominates the main room. Beamed onto the back wall is a film of CoS’s opening night performance, an infinitely more interesting affair than the one-line jokes of their standard gigs. By expanding the group’s line-up, original members Melissa Logan and Alex-Murray Leslie can now throw shapes and trip the light fantastic with a gloriously messy array of live art paraphernalia and wall-hangings that become bespoke provocations and irreverent manifestos. What matters here is the participatory, all
girls togetherness of what’s effectively a great big show-and-tell that takes the clichés of what in the 1980s Julie Burchill dubbed rock’s rich tapestry, then unstitches it into a wonkily ungainly day-glo activity pack of things to make and do that’s as much smudged on as switched-on. CoS encapsulate a similar sense of you-can-all-join-in empowerment that pulsed through ‘Trilogy’, theatre artist Nic Green’s recent epic rediscovery of 1970s feminism that culminated in a DIY explosion of joyously naked expression.
On show beyond the performance (which incorporated a theremin lounge) are a series of cigar- box synthesisers, sessions of in situ weaving and – best of all – a back room full of ‘shoe guitars’. Created in association with Milanese designer Max Kibardin, these are stilettos wired for sounds that do a whole lot more than click-clacking their way home. Instead, they take the machismo out of music. If guitars are an extension of the penis, then the feedback of these high-heels – fashion accessory turned artistic tool turned sonic weapon – stamp all over them. In this way CoS are the antidote to the reactionary gloss of Sex and the City. ‘BANG BANG’ to that. (Neil Cooper)
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REVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY AYOUNG KIM: MINIMA MEMORIA Streetlevel Photoworks, Glasgow, until Sun 1 Aug ●●●●●
‘Crop of dope to help my kids, 26 May, 2008’ reads one of the titles in the show. ‘Man hits bus roof after 70ft death plunge, 29 May 2007’ reads another. These are some of the grim headlines that inspired Korean artist Ayoung Kim to string together a personalised set of photomontages to help interpret the happenings in her new hometown of London.
She reconstructs these scenarios by manipulating the scale, cutting out detail and adding in shadows, in a playful, almost childlike way. The works are large and vividly coloured, but the most convincing work here is ‘Not in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time’, a scale model of Stockwell tube station in London where Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead after being mistaken for a terrorist. The viewer, however, does not need any prior knowledge of the incident to appreciate this beautifully and meticulously crafted image. The miniature model of the tube station – complete with CCTV cameras, signs and mirrors – also functioned as a set for the artist’s video by the same title. The camera zooms in and out of corners, capturing the wafting smoke that enters with a stream of light from a far away tunnel to evoke a haunting silence.
Kim is contending with a new way of making images within her new cultural environment, conducting herself in a second language, both verbally and through her image making, and it is her video work in particular that displays a more nuanced command of her subject matter. (Talitha Kotzé)
24 Jun–8 Jul 2010 THE LIST 89