VisualArt
PREVIEW FESTIVAL SONICA Various venues, Glasgow, Thu 8–Sun 18 Nov
From Arika’s Kill Your Timid Notion to Glasgow International, sound and vision have become increasingly promiscuous bedfellows over the last decade. Throw in an increased sense of theatricality to sound-based art, and all the elements are in place for Sonica, a brand-new feast for the senses that forms the latest addition to an ever-expanding Glasgow-based left-i eld arts diaspora. Produced by Cryptic, the music-theatre company who have
bridged artforms and worked internationally for almost 20 years, Sonica’s inaugural ten-day city-wide programme of ‘sonic art for the visually minded’ brings together already existing works by the likes of Janek Schaefer, whose turntable-based work featured several years ago in a major show at the CCA, alongside new commissions from home and abroad. These include Remember Me, an opera by Claudia Molitor performed inside a desk in Scotland Street School Museum. Elsewhere, Turner Prize nominee Luke Fowler will collaborate with Jean-Luc Guionnet to create a piece based on their relationship with electronic music. ‘There’s a real demand for this sort of work,’ according to Cryptic director Cathie Boyd, who instigated the Cryptic Nights showcases of sound-based work at CCA. ‘As well as the major international work, Cryptic has always been about showing off some of the more signii cant developing artists coming up, and we’re keen to do both of those things here.’
Co-curated with former CCA director and current head of
Huddersi eld Contemporary Music Festival, Graham McKenzie, and former producer of Almeida Opera and currently in charge of Norwich Festival, Patrick Dickie, Sonica will be a shape-shifting enterprise, promoting one-offs rather than i xing themselves to one format.
‘It’s important as well that some of the works get another life,’ says McKenzie, ‘because some of them have only ever been seen once.’
And as far as the ongoing renaissance of interest in cross-art
adventurousness goes, ‘Intellectually and emotionally,’ Dickie explains, ‘both artists and audiences want to explore all i ve of their senses. That’s the journey they’re prepared to make.’ (Neil Cooper)
REVIEW VIDEO INTALLATION DEXTER SINISTER: IDENTITY Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 28 Oct ●●●●● REVIEW MIXED MEDIA AGAIN, A TIME MACHINE Edinburgh Printmakers, until Sat 3 Nov ●●●●●
Identity is a new three-screened video installation at Tramway by a design duo known as Dexter Sinister. The audio-video installation is a highly polished lecture on the rise of corporate identities, and, specii cally, their use by arts organisations. It runs like a beginner’s guide to semiotics, with in-depth case studies on Tate, the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou. You can’t help but feel exasperated, if not utterly despairing, at some of its stories, like the meticulous consideration over using a lower case letter ‘o’ in the acronymic graphic of MoMA, or the years spent developing the slight vertical stretch of their chosen font in order to modernise it. Identity does a good job pulling out the laughable
nature in logo design and branding fashion, but the team have also done some extremely insightful research which points out the weird overlap between cultural and corporate worlds. The immaculate white room and pristine projections mimic the facile sleekness of corporate design, giving the work an ominous and inhuman feel. In all, a very well delivered institutional critique, which at times makes you genuinely uncomfortable. (Michael Davis)
122 THE LIST 18 Oct–15 Nov 2012
As print media gasps its last, non-proi t publisher and arts organisation Book Works holds i rm on that last unoccupied mound. Again, A Time Machine is a touring exhibition and curio paean to radical art practices of the late 20th century. Anarchic conceptualism, spoken word and performance art are celebrated as is the documentation and paperwork that goes with it. Again, A Time Machine reminds us that life was once rich in such ephemera.
Book Works has opened its archives and asked a load of artists to let loose. The result is as intriguing as it is bewildering. The main room of the exhibition is dominated by i ctional archive table display ‘Make the Living Look Dead’. Material and related publications of Book Works’ artists jostle for place. Jeremy Deller’s jukebox still, Steve Beard and Victoria Halford’s ‘This is Slavery’ and Giles Eldridge’s ‘Black to the Future’ hold their own in the clutter. Jonathan Monk’s ‘A Poster Project’ is a pleasingly perverse take on the art of l y postering, Inventory’s ‘Smash This Puny Existence’ poster tapestry is a rare beast of insurrection and the selection of recent works by French artist Laure Prouvost are full of humour and mischief. (Paul Dale)
REVIEW WORKS ON PAPER ANDREW KERR: DELLMESS WAS CHARGED The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 20 Oct ●●●●●
It is hard not to like these acrylic works on paper. Unframed and pinned to the white wall they sit comfortably, owning the space, yet not too precious. Pigments in a muted tonal range have been moved around on the small-scale canvas in an automative manner, at times hinting at an outline of a shape. Occasional brightness luminesces from beneath the surface. These works are dependent on one another, relying on each other’s colours, small size and searching brush strokes to bring to life their own worth. Glasgow-based artist Andrew Kerr has also created three-dimensional works. They bring together the wall-based works to form a cohesive show. Similar to his paintings, objects lie small in the process of becoming. These curious paper shapes seem to have been chewed, moulded and spat out on an operating table for closer examination.
It is exactly this lure to closer inspection that keeps
you squinting, zooming, focusing, considering, doubting and reconsidering the appeal of the works on show. (Talitha Kotzé)