VISUAL ART | PREVIEWS & REVIEWS P H O T O
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FILM STALKING THE IMAGE: MARGARET TAIT AND HER LEGACY GoMA, Glasgow, until Sun 5 May ●●●●●
Part of a series of events organised across Scotland to mark the centenary of Margaret Tait’s birth, this is a rare chance to see a selection of work by the pioneering Orkney-born filmmaker, alongside material from her archive. In the main ground floor gallery at GoMA, a showreel of nine of Tait’s films (varying in length from two to 32 minutes) is shown next to a programme of films by contemporary artists who have received the Margaret Tait Award launched in her memory in 2010, including Rachel Maclean and Charlotte Prodger. While there are some practical challenges – such as
noise bleed between the two screens and the difficulty of working out where one is in the rolling programmes – Tait’s work is absorbing. Working experimentally, and always outside of the mainstream, she turned down opportunities with major filmmakers in order to pursue her own singular vision (‘stalking the image’ is a phrase she borrowed from Lorca and used to describe her practice). While her work is diverse, and includes experiments
such as colourful hand-painted animation, it is the longer films such as ‘Where I Am Is Here’ (1963) and ‘Place of Work’ (1976) which linger most powerfully. Episodic and fragmented in its gaze, the camera follows her eye, picking out details and gradually building up a nuanced picture. The lingering focus on everyday things and refusal of conventional narrative reminds us why her work is so popular with many artists today. (Susan Mansfield)
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EXPRESSIONISM THE GERMAN REVOLUTION: EXPRESSIONIST PRINTS Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, Fri 1 Mar–Sun 25 Aug
The Hunterian Art Gallery’s exhibition will focus on the period of anarchy and violence that broke out at the end of the First World War, in Berlin and other big cities, continuing until the establishment of the Weimar Republic in August 1919. This fascinating chapter of history is told through the revolutionary printmaking that emerged, and which has been steadfastly acquired by the Hunterian since the 1950s making it one of the most significant holdings of Expressionist works in the UK. Seventy-five works will be exhibited, including prints
by Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckmann and George Grosz, and two recently acquired works by Käthe Kollwitz: ‘Three Studies of a Woman in Mourning’ (1905) and ‘Mother with a Child in Her Arms’ (1909). Hunterian curator Peter Black calls the era ‘the
great period of the woodcut’, which was led by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch who inspired many to take up the medium. Munch’s woodcut ‘In the Man’s Brain’ (1897) will be shown among German works, as well as pieces by Picasso, Gauguin and Goya, demonstrating the influence of other European artists on those working in Germany at the time. (Rachael Cloughton)
PHOTOGRAPHY ROBERT BLOMFIELD: EDINBURGH STREET PHOTOGRAPHY City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sun 17 Mar ●●●●●
Robert Blomfield’s retrospective show is an unusual and welcome look at a body of work which was formerly largely unknown. It offers a sense of Edinburgh-but-not-Edinburgh; a view upon the city which at once feels familiar, yet shows landmarks and sights which are now gone.
Blomfield's images are all presented in stark
monochrome, and there's a sense of a simpler and most likely harder time about them, yet they're no poverty safari. The artist practised street photography in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London between the 1950s and the 1970s, and it's true that slum conditions were hard to avoid in every British city in those days (a particular kind of post-war decrepitude, that is, as opposed to the poverty of austerity which we find now). Yet these photographs capture a panoply of Edinburgh street life and work. Blomfield manages to find just the right framing to pass wry or humorous comment upon what's occurring. From university lecture theatres to Leith pub doors, this show is not only a document of the city's past, but a well-observed and timeless study of people which is a joy to spend time with. (David Pollock)
100 THE LIST 1 Feb–31Mar 2019
EXHIBITION CHARLES II: ART AND POWER Queen's Gallery, Edinburgh until Sun 2 Jun ●●●●●
When Charles II was restored to power in 1660, following the demise of Oliver Cromwell, the new king made up for his nine years in the wilderness between reigns by becoming a good-time boy and amassing a huge collection of art. In Antonio Verrio's magnificently overblown and
not a little camp 'The Sea Triumph of Charles II', the king looks every inch the pop star monarch, while Sir Peter Lely's ten-portrait series, The Windsor Beauties, shows off Charles' assorted rosy-cheeked mistresses, plus his presumably indulgent wife, Catherine of Braganza, lined up in paintings that resemble a restoration version of Hello! magazine. Beyond the self-deification, propaganda and pure glamour-chasing pleasure, the presence of no less than three paintings of biblical beheadings in this exhibition also suggests a fondness for grand gestures of a decapitatory kind.
Charles II wasn't the first member of the establishment to try and use an artistic veneer as a political tool to beautify the nation(s) and lend the set-up they front some credibility, and he's certainly not the last. As with all of them, and as this exhibition shows, legacy is everything, and, if handled right, will still be paying dividends long after the old order has fallen. (Neil Cooper)