list.co.uk/visualart Previews & Reviews | VISUAL ART
GROUP SHOW SONIA BOYCE/PAVEL BÜCHLER/ SUSAN HILLER: SPEAKING IN TONGUES CCA, Glasgow, until Sun 23 Mar ●●●●●
It’s the sound of clacking typewriter keys that first strikes you on stepping into this show, which, in different ways, reflects on the colour of memory. In the case of all three artists, who have a long history with the CCA building, it reveals how that memory, collective or otherwise, can be moulded, shaped and customised to order. This is seen through preservation, wilful negation or, in Boyce’s case, via a gloriously messy reclaiming of half-hidden pop-cultural detritus.
The typing noises come from Büchler’s I am going to use this projector, in which a cassette recorder hung on the wall plays a recording of someone typing out a transcription of the text that hangs next to it. Hiller too shows how free- association can be harnessed in Measure by Measure Section II, which displays the ashes of paintings burnt by the artist in a series of jars and containers. As with the framed diary pages of Büchler’s Idle Thoughts, in which the same pages are written over again and again, Hiller’s piece tantalises the viewer about what’s being hidden even as it creates something afresh.
It is Boyce’s piece The Devotional Collection, however, that remains the most immediate and joyous example of how scraps of the past captured in a record or on a magazine cover can shape an entire culture. Against one wall, rows of artefacts from black women in music are lined up, moving from Amazulu to Winifred Atwell, Betty Boo to Neneh Cherry, Myleene Klass to Cleo Laine, Sade to the Saturdays and beyond. These are women who found their voices, and in turn gave voice to others in a way that’s gloriously refreshed every time the needle hits the groove. (Neil Cooper)
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Choir Master
SCULPTURE JONATHAN OWEN Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 1 Mar–Sat 19 Apr ‘Acts of careful vandalism’ is the attractive phrase Jonathan Owen uses to describe the works of art he creates. The Edinburgh College of Art graduate, who hails from the north of England, explains that his ‘eraser drawings’ are created by rubbing out characters from film stills in books. ‘The process is like a kind of two-dimensional carving,’ he says ‘Imperfections and glitches are inevitable, and there’s a degree of improvisation taking place within these simple parameters. The actor’s image isn’t rubbed out to leave a blank shape in the image, but erased gradually to form the background details of the scene they once inhabited.’
He uses a similarly adaptive process on his sculptures, which are 19th century statues that have been further carved by his own hand. ‘They were made originally to represent dynamic or powerful figures,’ he says. ‘I wanted to remove or lessen these qualities in a way which didn’t destroy the objects, which allowed them still to have a recognisable human form. As with the eraser drawings, these things are made by taking away. The same process that was used to make the statue, by someone else in a different century, is re-activated and continued, producing a new proposition.’ (David Pollock)
PHOTOGRAPHY HELGA PARIS: FOTOGRAFIE Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, until Sun 30 Mar This major retrospective of the German photographer Helga Paris gets its only British showing in this exhibition at Street Level Photoworks. A resident of the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin since 1966, she provides an intimate portrayal of postwar East Germany through portraiture of its diverse inhabitants and dilapidated urban landscape. ‘My intention had been to document life in its natural way, as nobody else did this previously,’ says Paris. ‘I felt an inner compulsion.’
PHOTOGRAPHY TAYLOR WESSING PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT PRIZE Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 1 Mar–Mon 26 May After almost three months on show at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize moves north for its first exhibition in Scotland. ‘Since its inception in 1993, when the prize was first sponsored by the John Kobal Foundation, the competition has encouraged photographers from all over the world to participate,’ says Anne Lyden, curator of photography at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
The exhibition presents works from various This year, more than 5000 images were
periods and locations, from Transylvania to New York, all of which reveal Paris’ compassionate and tender approach. Despite the lack of market for such images in communist East Germany, the work found popularity even before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. ‘The fall of the wall represented a great break,’ says Paris. ‘After the collapse of the wall, journalists and photographers were appearing from all over the world and I didn’t have to take pictures anymore. I felt the sense of break from the urgency to take them.’ Paris’ work after German reunification departs from the documentary approach of previous pieces, presenting her personal exploration of childhood memories and emotions. (Kirsty Neale) submitted, and they were whittled down to the 60 pieces that will be exhibited at the portrait gallery, which Lyden says is a ‘natural setting’ for the work. Spencer Murphy was announced as the winner of the £12,000 prize last November, for his photograph of mud-splattered Irish jockey Katie Walsh, while Anoush Abrar’s portrait of the former UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan and Mamta Dubey and Infant by Giles Price were also shortlisted. Given the nature of the selection process and the reputation of the award, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize promises a wide-reaching body of work of a consistently high standard – expect every piece to be a highlight. (Rachael Cloughton)
20 Feb–20 Mar 2014 THE LIST 97