VISUAL ART | Previews & Reviews
PAINT/SCULPTURE ALEXIS MARGUERITE TEPLIN: HE, HO, HA, HMMM . . . Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 13 Apr.
Alexis M Teplin’s second exhibition at Mary Mary Gallery is an eclectic display of rough and unapologetically abstract works. With heavy modernist styling, the show consists of patchwork painting works, unstretched and impenetrable, and lumpy floor-based sculptures like papier-mâché . The show feels inflexible, unsubtle and flat, allowing for little more interaction than bare surface colour and shapes. Teplin describes the works as having a figurative or at least symbolic meaning, with each piece standing for words in the title of the show, as a laugh and a contemplation, but it does little and still it feels devoid of personality. The art historical references within the work point to high modernism, of Pollock perhaps and Robert Morris, and through coarse collaged parts in the painted works, to Oscar Wilde’s Salome, to decadence and excess, to facile materialism and glitter.
Overall the exhibition is opaque and obtuse in extreme, an abstract surface which somehow leaves you wanting more. It seems Templin is aware of the aversive nature of the work, playing with it and arranging it, deliberately so. But one can’t help feel frustrated wondering why. He ho ha, hmmm . . . perhaps not. (Michael Davis)
VIDEO FLICKERING LIGHTS Summerhall, Edinburgh, until Sat 18 May ●●●●●
Up in the Lower Church Gallery end of Summerhall, three very different video works are in motion as part of this superb arts space’s latest exhibition programme. David Bellingham’s ‘An Object Revolving Around a Day / An Object Revolving Round Events’ is a four-minute animated burl traversing a yellow sun and a blur moon that recalls a wonkier take on the opening credits of 1970s eco-friendly sitcom, The Good Life.
Self-christened artistic family collective, Maris, give us ‘2013.01.27 – 11.52’, a film of the daily drive from their country home to studio shot through their car windscreen. Best of all is ‘LolCats’, Rachel Maclean’s epic DayGlo digital mash-up involving Egyptian cat worship, the Tower of Babel, Starbucks and internet meme subtitles.
While the cyclic inevitability of Bellingham’s piece is as appealingly hypnotic as the accompanying flick-book produced for the show, and the mundane ritual of Maris lays bare a pilgrimage of sorts, it is Maclean’s cartoon pop-vid bravura that stands out. The cosplaying, nouveau Warholian Wonderland her characters occupy may appear kitty-kat cute, but, as with the little guy who became the Wizard of Oz, there’s something darker at play in a piece of very serious fun. (Neil Cooper)
106 THE LIST 21 Mar–18 Apr 2013
DRAWING INK National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, until Sun 9 Jun ●●●●● INSTALLATION/RETROSPECTIVE WENDY RAMSHAW Room of Dreams, Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh until 30 March ●●●●●
This powerful exhibition showcases works from diverse artists including Rembrandt, Rubens and William Henry Playfair. From fast, energetic sketches depicting movement and form, to the meticulous draughtsmanship of architectural drawings, Ink demonstrates the understated beauty and versatility of a medium that has been used for centuries but is still relevant today.
Dating from the 1420s, Gentile da Fabriano’s rarely displayed Christ and St Peter is one of the oldest drawings in the National Galleries’ permanent collection; figures finely and precisely rendered on vellum, made from calf or goat skin. This sits alongside designs for engravings, scientific studies, portraits, landscapes and some truly dramatic and vibrant works – the economic brush marks in Rembrandt’s Christ on the Road to Emmaus suggest both speed and energy. A real delight is Piranesi’s Interior of a Prison, one of few surviving drawings relating to the etchings of the artist’s Carceri d’Invenzione (Imaginary Prisons) series. The use of wash depicts the interior's dark austerity very differently from the ink in the more familiar etchings, but just as effectively, demonstrating the range of this beautiful medium. (Rhona Taylor)
Reflecting Miguel de Cervantes' belief that to 'protract great design is to ruin it', artist, designer, jeweller and goddess of the festooned gate Wendy Ramshaw is contemporary applied art's elusive matriarch.
Ramshaw's extraordinary career is celebrated in this show that takes its name from her 2002 installation – the centrepiece of this excellent touring exhibition. Ramshaw's huge body of work is represented in the main room. There's her beautiful sketches that bring into focus her gift for the fantastic and surreal. There's the high design rockets, the photographs and templates of her inspired wrought iron gates. There's those brooches, art deco renderings in the pop art age, only Leah Stein came anywhere close. There's glass, tribal necklaces, digit-embellishments that look like cock rings with nipples of moonstone, tourmaline and labradorite on top. Ramshaw's creations are myriad and astounding.
Then it's into the doll's house; the Room of
Dreams, 'like a collector's collection of specimens, some dreams and some tales of caution.' Framed Rousseau postcards provide a counterpoint. This dream of a life has been a sweet one. (Paul Dale)