LIST.CO.UK/FESTIVAL RODERICK BUCHANAN: LEGACY Feature-length film installation exploring both sides of the Troubles in Northern Ireland ●●●●●
For a work that brings together the two sides of the same coin that are Irish Republicanism and Northern Irish Loyalism, the black wall that divides the two screens of Roderick Buchanan’s feature-length film installation without comment is a silently knowing piece of symbolism. Commissioned in association with
the Imperial War Museum, Buchanan’s useu , uc a a s piece charts a pair of of Glasgow flute bands’ s’ participation in two ideologically opposed ed marches. While the Black Skull Corps of of Fife and Drum travel el to Londonderry to celebrate the 320th anniversary of the lifting fting of the siege of the city, city, the Parkhead Republican Flute Band commemorate the Easter Rising in Derry during 2010. S E E L I S T . C O . U K F O R M O R E I N F O
With no narration, and with the sound
wilfully flitting between each film in the style of censored UK news bulletins of the 1980s, at first glance this seems to be a pair of community away-day rituals. With the screenings flanked on all sides by photographic portraits of the members of each band that lends them the air of football cards, Buchanan neither judges nor asks questions, but opts instead for a form of anthropological reportage. Only when you read the statements from each band on the wall do the events’ full historical contexts become clear. Watching the films in tandem, as
both bands make their way through run-down housing schemes, it’s easy to recognise in such mutual shows of strength a common ground that speaks volumes about class and social conditions. Strip away the uniforms, the film
suggests, and both bands would be marching to a different, but eminently like-minded drum. (Neil Cooper) ■ Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 624 6200, until 16 Sep, free.
REVIEWS FESTIVAL VISUAL ART
WEAVING THE CENTURY One hundred years of the Dovecot weavers ●●●●●
It’s 100 years since the Dovecot Studios was established in its first home in Corstorphine, and this exciting tapestry exhibition over three floors of its current premises in Infirmary Street is a fitting celebration of how this very traditional art form has developed and adapted.
Nowhere is this clearer than in ‘After, After, After Monarch of the Glen’ – Peter Saville after Sir Peter Blake after Edwin Landseer – the final in a series of appropriations and reinterpretations of Landseer’s original painting; a woven tapestry bringing the evolution of the work full circle, and the modern, seemingly digitalised image offering a contemporary take on the hunt as depicted in traditional tapestry wall hangings. Elsewhere, more than 60 works illustrate the history of the studio – for example an Alfred Priest tapestry of Mount Stuart revealing the studio’s early connections with its founder, the Marquess of Bute – while exciting collaborations with artists including Elizabeth Blackadder, David Hockney and John Bellany demonstrate the broad language of tapestry as well as its potential and relevance to contemporary art practice. (Rhona Taylor) ■ Dovecot Studios, 550 3660, until 7 Oct (not Sun), free.
VAN GOGH TO KANDINSKY: SYMBOLIST LANDSCAPE IN EUROPE 1880-1910 Extraordinary exploration of Symbolism and landscape painting ●●●●●
There is something timely and relevant about a major exhibition of paintings created during a time of economic change and uncertainty in society, and against a backdrop of modern living that engendered feelings of fear, alienation and disillusionment with materialism.
With Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880-1910, the National Galleries of Scotland
have brought together more than 70 diverse works from across Europe; an extraordinary exploration of the development of painting during this period from representation towards abstraction and surrealism via the broad movement of Symbolism – artists of every discipline including poets, writer and composers who aimed to imagine and suggest rather than purely describe, focusing on content to convey a feeling or mood rather than represent a visual reality. The range of work and the variety of landscape in the exhibition, which is divided into six themed rooms, is almost as broad as the Symbolist movement itself, and the emotive effect of landscape and nature is clearly illustrated. Themes range from a room of contrived utopian visions of an earthly Arcadia to an intriguing ro room of desolate and melancholy ‘silent’ cities, devoid of human life. These latter works highlight the lo loneliness, solitude and anonymity of modern living: the bleak monochrome of Fernand Khnopff’s ‘The Lac d d’Armour, Bruges’ – a quiet and nostalgic image – is based not only on the artist’s own memories, but also fa fantasy, and inspired by literature concerned with grief and withdrawal. Also explored in depth and curated w with sensitivity are themes and motifs including dreams, the subconscious, the physical world and death.
The final, colourful sixth room explores the connection of painting to music and the psychology of c colour, as well as the search for spirituality. Works by Mondrian and Charles Filiger alongside Kandinsky’s ‘C ‘Cossacks’ and ‘Murnau with Church II’ illustrate a further removal from pure representation – providing not o only a satisfying conclusion to an exploration of Symbolist landscape, but also a fine introduction to what fo followed, and the development of abstract art. (Rhona Taylor) ■ ■ National Galleries of Scotland, 624 6200, until 14 Oct, £10 (£7).
2–9 Aug 2012 THE LIST 85