VISUAL ART list.co.uk/visualart
HITLIST THE BEST EXHIBITIONS
✽ Drawn Away Together Let your imagination run riot in this caption-free group show that puts the focus on process, form and material. See review, page 107. Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 4 May.
✽ William E Jones Three documentary films cut up and recontexutalised to powerful political effect by the provocative LA artist. See review, page 106. The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 25 May.
✽ Marilène Oliver: Confusão Images of the human body taken from MRI scans then turned into something tactile and mysterious. See review, page 106. Edinburgh Printmakers, until Sat 11 May.
✽ David Batchelor: Flatlands An explosion of colour as the Dundee-born
artist shows off his two-dimensional work. See preview, left. Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 4 May–Sun 14 Jul.
✽ Economy Final chance to catch
this excellent group show profiling work by artists including Tracey Emin and Jeremy Deller, exploring different aspects of the
global economy. Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 21 Apr.
✽ Ink Rembrandt, Rubens and Piranesi
feature in this powerful exhibition celebrating the medium of ink. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 9 Jun.
18 Apr–16 May 2013 THE LIST 105
DAVID BATCHELOR: FLATLANDS Putting colour centre stage R enowned for many years for his sculptures
images – is an aesthetic treat, a bright and eye- catching array of arranged blocks of colour, designs for sculptures and what appear to be action paintings, where colour bleeds and runs together at the edges. Yet there’s much more to it than that, says Batchelor.
‘All the work I’ve done for 20 years now has been about colour – even when it’s white,’ he says. ‘There’s actually a long history in Western art of marginalising colour, of treating it as a superficial element in comparison to drawing, because it’s not masculine, not rational, not serious. So I’m interested in asserting colour as a very important part of the human visual and cultural experience more than I am in making pretty coloured pictures.’ (David Pollock) Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 4 May to Sun 14 Jul.
using lightboxes and pieces of reclaimed detritus from city streets, the Dundee-born, London-based David Batchelor didn’t show his drawings and paintings in public until a show at Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery in 2007. Since then, two-dimensional work has become a major part of his life as an exhibiting artist, as it will be here at the Fruitmarket. ‘The simple answer is, I don’t know why,’ he says. ‘Things move in a certain way in the studio almost in spite of you sometimes. Although behind all the three-dimensional work I’ve been making for a lot of years, there’s always a lot of drawing. To my mind there’s something more pleasurable about imagining the work than making the work, it holds more promise at that point.’ What Flatlands promises – going on his early