VISUAL ART | Previews & Reviews
REVIEW: PRINTS IAN HAMILTON FINLAY: POET, ARTIST, REVOLUTIONARY Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Sat 1 Mar 2014 ●●●●●
In celebrating an artist who has already achieved plenty of retrospective appreciation, this modestly sized exhibition in a smaller upstairs room at GoMA takes a fresh and intriguing approach. Much of the late Ian Hamilton Finlay’s work featured references to revolution, mainly as reappropriations of the language and iconography of revolt. This well-curated selection of prints, concrete texts and in situ installations is arranged in a manner that is striking and often highly amusing. The French Revolution features prominently, not least in the
two installations that appeared when the gallery opened in 1996: ‘The Patriot’s Room 1789, An Idyll’, a peaceful tearoom setting decorated with crocheted hanging revolutionary slogans; and ‘Three Heads’, three sculpted plaster heads in baskets, displayed with the intimated hint that they’re those of Finlay’s antagonists Waldemar Januszczak, Gwyn Headley and Catherine Millet. Alongside them, Finlay’s handpainted Robespierre quote reads: ‘We want to substitute morality for egotism, duty for etiquette, integrity for insolence, large-mindedness for vanity, merit for intrigue.’ As far as mission statements go, it’s devastating.
The prints on display go as far as might be reasonably expected towards injecting some overt political commentary into a gallery show, but it’s done with a light touch. ‘A Panzer Selection’ shows battle tank designs as if they were a chocolate box selection card, and ‘L’Ami du Peuple’ recreates the French Revolutionary publication as an issue of People’s Friend. ‘Personnes Intéressées’ and ‘Two Scythes’ introduce tricky Nazi imagery as inventive graphic constructs and ‘The Medium is the Message’ is a playful response to institutional bureaucracy, its title and the legend ‘Death to Strathclyde Region’ displayed with the outline of a hanging guillotine. (David Pollock)
N O T R E L L U F T T O C S A L R A C
REVIEW: PRINTMAKING PIETRO TESTA: MASTER DRAUGHTSMAN AND PRINTMAKER Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 12 Oct ●●●●● REVIEW: PAINTING HUGH BUCHANAN: THE ESTERHAZY ARCHIVE WATERCOLOURS Summerhall, Edinburgh, until Sun 28 Jul ●●●●●
Located deep within the Scottish National Gallery, this show of 29 exhibits by Baroque etcher Pietro Testa doesn’t just rescue the little-known Italian printmaker from obscurity, it also exemplifies the tortured artist of the 17th century.
Shy and proud, Testa committed suicide in his late thirties; the frustration of rejected commissions combined with prolonged self-doubt led him to throw himself into the Tiber River. These autobiographical elements – evident in every display – are expressed through his fascination with ethereal, yet often violent, depictions of theological drama. For the most part, the exhibition is full of putti-
littered, classically inspired allegorical scenes. Whether depicting God looking down from the heavens, decapitated babies in ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’, or monochrome rainbows cascading over a fairytale heroine, they all present Testa’s masterful pen strokes, splashes and contours to fine effect. Even Testa’s small self-portrait – pudgy, long-haired and with big bags under his eyes – provides articulate authentication of this etcher’s curious and tragic talent. (Barry Gordon)
106 THE LIST 11 Jul–22 Aug 2013
The title of this new show of 16 watercolours, hung all too appropriately in Summerhall’s wood-panelled Dean’s Room, sounds as though it’s been lifted from a 1960s Cold War spy caper. But its depictions of books and documents all bundled up with brown paper and string are even more intriguing. The Esterhazy family archive is stored in Forchtenstein, south of Vienna, in 25 vaulted rooms within the basement of an ancient fortress. Buchanan’s excavation not only captures the meticulous intricacy of the endeavour, but seems also to tap into that very in-vogue notion of archiving as art.
Yet, by observing it at first remove, as Buchanan does here, there’s a gimlet-eyed objectivity to his studies as much as there is warmth. While there are hints of Beuysian-styled detritus on show acknowledged in the title of one of the larger works hung on the walls beside Summerhall’s staircase, framing the archives in impressionistic paintings like this makes them less austere and self-consciously mysterious. The light and shade in each painting bathes the bundles in a romantic glow that gives each package a mythological air to savour. (Neil Cooper)
PREVIEW: SCULPTURE & PRINTMAKING CARLA SCOTT FULLERTON: OCCUPYING FORMS Glasgow Print Studio, Glasgow, until Sun 18 Aug
Coming from a rural environment, Carla Scott Fullerton’s creative process is inspired by her experience of the contrasting urban landscape. She creates her sculptural work by deconstructing architectural forms and using raw building materials based on their unique qualities and character. Concrete, steel and glass in their honest, natural forms, are essential to the design, creation and spirit of her sculptures and form the basis of her abstract prints in Occupying Forms.
These prints present the unpredictable
sculptural forms in a carefully composed manner, juxtaposing irregular shapes with geometric and linear arrangements. Through this simplification of form and line, she creates a rhythmic play of parts in her prints, connecting the materials of the built environment with the subjectivity of human experience and perception. Scott Fullerton’s prints have strong modernist
qualities, and the placement of her work within the gallery is carefully composed to respond to the exhibition space, engaging the viewer in a sensory experience of the two-dimensional representation of the industrial environment. (Rachel Craig)