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REVIEW ATSUO OKAMOTO: FARAWAY MOUNTAIN Selection of beautiful, fragile stone sculptures ●●●●●
Walking among Atsuo Okamoto’s granite sculpture feels rather like exploring a prehistoric puzzle – 12 pillars, erupting from the ground, cracked and split into pieces then carefully put back together.
The Japanese sculptor’s first solo show in the UK has a strong sense of both exploration and play, particularly in relation to his material. In a short video that accompanies Faraway Mountain, the artist describes how, as a child growing up in the poverty of postwar Hiroshima, he played with stones he took from a riverbank: ‘This is my toy and now, still, I like it.’ The exhibit itself indicates an almost child-like inquisitiveness into this material and the effects that human culture and the environment have upon it. Okamoto uses a traditional Japanese carving technique known as ‘wari modishi’, which translates roughly as splitting and returning. Here, the 12 pillars have been created by splitting a single piece of granite, which could be reconstructed if the pillars were placed back together. These structures, themselves divided into smaller pieces and then reformed, have a beautiful, fragile appearance, contradicting the strength and weight of their material.
The second part of this show, and just as interesting, consists of two of Okamoto’s stone ‘turtle’ works. Part of a project begun by the artist in 2001, he split large stones into several individual parts, which he sent to collaborators all over the world. They then kept them in their home or place of work for up to six years. Most have now been returned to Okamoto, who has placed them back together. The changes that each piece underwent are immediately clear from the sculpture’s patchwork of colours – changes which, Okamoto points out, are due to the effect of the individual collaborators and their environments. Indeed, it is this very change that he says he finds interesting and surprising, suggesting that each piece of the sculpture has absorbed aspects of its surroundings, becoming a memorial to its own environment. ‘Each stone has a personal colour and each memory of the collaborator,’ he says. ‘Not just human memory . . . every memory.’ (Rhona Taylor) ■ Corn Exchange Gallery, 561 7300, until 30 Sep (not Sat/Sun), free.
REVIEW PHILIP BRAHAM: FALLING SHADOWS IN ARCADIA Insensitively curated exhibition pits the fragility of human life against the enduring landscape ●●●●●
This exhibition of photographic prints by the RSA’s Morton Award winner 2009 comprises two very different series’. The most prominent pictures are black and white scenes of popular suicide spots – forests, bodies of water, vacant bridges. In contrast, Braham’s colour series ‘Falling Shadows in Arcadia’ is a collection of eight staged images documenting sites around Scotland used for outdoor sex. While the Eros and Thanitos parallels are obvious, as is his interest in the fragility of being versus the endurance of nature (further endorsed by the artist’s explicit reference to Poussin’s painting ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’), this pairing is strained.
Driven by the fact that Scotland has a suicide rate equivalent to twice that of the UK as a whole, and intrigued by the codified language used to discuss it, Braham has turned a cold lens to a collection of sites pinpointed by Braham’s spare titles – ‘Copse on Gallows Hill, Tealing’, ‘St Michael’s Crossroads, Fife’.
In contrast, Braham’s ‘Arcadia’ works make use of a long exposure to introduce naked, ghost-like figures in the autumnal woodlands. To almost theatrical effect, each image includes a metaphorical prop – a shoe, watch or condom wrapper – and dark narratives are introduced. Although Braham’s ‘Suicide Notes’ are powerful, this strangely insensitive pairing negates the individual strengths of each. (Rosalie Doubal) ■ Royal Scottish Academy, 225 6671, until 3 Sep, free.
26 Aug–9 Sep 2010 THE LIST 53
REVIEW THE SPACE BETWEEN Erratic mixed printmaking show ●●●●●
Taking the theme of ‘space’ as its departure, it is unsurprising that the selection of work in Amber Art’s current show is erratic: by its very nature all artwork deals with space. It appears instead that the term is a comfortable theme within which to couch the exhibition’s glaringly disparate prints. And yet, the work of the 13 contemporary artists on display here is arranged in
a way that only emphasises its inconsistency. Prints that would have benefited from being placed side by side, such as Bronwen Sleigh’s muted graphic prints ‘East Way I and II’, are divided by jarring works, in this case Gayle Robinson’s colourful abstracted landscape study ‘Rainbows and Furrows’. The same curatorial short sightedness happens again with Kelly Stewart’s silkscreen prints of Edinburgh street scenes. The obvious pairing of ‘Old Town’ and ‘New Town’ studies are separated oddly by Sophie McKay’s acrylic, portrait screen-print ‘Spells’. The closeness does little to enhance either artist’s work. The only real fluidity in the exhibition lies in the standard of work on show, but
unfortunately this is due to its bland and tepid nature. It is only Patrizio Belcampo’s screenprint ‘Aubrey’ that strays from the comfortable genres of landscape and portrait. Presenting a sophisticated monochrome work of silhouettes donned in medieval garments and tinged with sadomasochistic undertones, Belcampo provides the edge needed to elevate the show from mundanity. (Rachael Cloughton) ■ Amber Arts, 661 1167, until 18 Sep (not Sun/Mon), free.