VISUAL ART | Previews & Reviews
PREVIEW MIXED-MEDIA GROUP SHOW LIVING PROOF Glasgow Print Studio, Glasgow, until Sun 2 Feb
The title of this new group show is a direct reference to Charles Darwin’s voyage on the HMS Beagle in search of living specimens to support his theory of evolution. And there may also be a sense of evolution through the works on display, with a pan- generational host of Glasgow artists – including John Byrne, Elizabeth Blackadder and Alasdair Gray – being asked to contribute. The print works range from the humorous to the esoteric, with a broad range of styles and tones in between.
The brief for artists invited to contribute is that their work should deal with creatures of some sort, and that it should reflect those featured in the ‘Menagerie’ sculpture exhibition held in the same venue back in 1990. ‘Why artists choose to include animals in their work is a mystery, other than a general human fascination with creatures,’ says John Mackechnie, the Glasgow Print Studio’s director. ‘Even going back to the earliest cave paintings, they were depicted, and nearly all people will at some time in their life keep pets. Watching television last week, I discovered that some animals do this too.’
He quotes Fiona Watson, one of the exhibiting artists, in an attempt to further understand why the subject might inspire an artist. ‘The use of animals in art allows us to reflect on who we are and who “they” are, she has said. As our culture becomes more urbanised and virtual, there is a need to explore the natural realm. After all, the animal represents our ancestral partner.’ (David Pollock)
PREVIEW INSTALLATION JERRY GRETZINGER: JERRY’S MAP Summerhall, Edinburgh, until Fri 24 Jan
When fictional fantasist Billy Liar wanted to escape from the horrors of the real world, he would retreat to a place inside his head called Ambrosia. The Situationists, meanwhile, charted psychogeographic maps of European cities, navigating places by mood rather than geography. There is much of the spirit of both in Jerry Gretzinger’s ever-expanding map of an imaginary world, which the American artist has been painting for more than 50 years, and which currently numbers some 3011 sheets of A4 paper. ‘It goes way back to my childhood,’ 79-year-old Gretzinger explains. ‘I was fascinated with maps, and would imagine these places, because we didn’t travel much. Then at some point I started making my own. That grew out of playing with my brother on this little plot of land we lived on. We created this little model village out of dirt, and then I started translating that on to paper. For me it’s a form of escapism, I guess.’
Gretzinger will update his increasingly multi- dimensional map while in Edinburgh and beyond. ‘It frustrates me,’ he says, ‘because there are a couple of new dimensions I want to bring in, but they take time, and although I probably won’t be around to finish them, I want to keep doing it as long as I can.’ (Neil Cooper)
128 THE LIST 12 Dec 2013–23 Jan 2014
REVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY JILL TODD PHOTOGRAPHIC AWARD Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, until 2 Feb ●●●●●
The Jill Todd Photographic Award was set up in memory of the talented young photographer who trained at Edinburgh Napier University and was at the start of a promising career when she sadly died from an aggressive form of cancer. The award is dedicated to photographers who have recently graduated from Scottish institutions. For this year’s exhibition, artists were selected
according to their response to the theme of home. James Dixon uses photography to re-investigate the familiar spaces of his home, seeing them afresh through the intervention of an 8inx10in field camera and transparent film. Felix Davey uses photography to investigate a family he met in a chance encounter in Rome. His resulting images are beautiful and poetic, capturing moments of intimacy between Davey and his subjects. Theresa Moerman Ib turns the theme on its head, concentrating on the absence of home by capturing broken, fragmented associations through the transitory and impermanent medium of a smartphone camera.
The sensitivity of the selected works, which carefully and imaginatively handle the theme, contributes further poignancy to an already emotionally loaded award. (Rachael Cloughton)
PREVIEW PAINTING & SCULPTURE THE SCOTTISH COLOURISTS SERIES: JD FERGUSSON Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Two, Edinburgh, until Sun 15 Jun
Sometimes, if you want to learn about life, you have to get out of the classroom. So proved John Duncan Fergusson, the largely self-taught colourist, who rejected a classical training in Edinburgh for a life less ordinary on the continent. A proud Scot, Fergusson swiftly became
immersed in Parisian society, hung out with Picasso, and took inspiration from impressionism and fauvism. His work was described by André Dunoyer de Segonzac as ‘a deep and pure expression of his immense love of life’, and his paintings still retain their relevance, vibrancy and rich sense of colour 50 years after his death.
His work was greatly influenced by his partner, the dance pioneer Margaret Morris, and it shows in the 100 paintings, sculptures, works on paper and archive items on display at Modern Two. This anticipated retrospective is the third and final exhibition in the Scottish National Gallery’s colourists series, all of which have been sensitively curated by Alice Strang, with its relevance and impact already evident in the huge response by commercial galleries around Scotland. (Barry Gordon)