A good day in Edinburgh Galleries!

Saturday 19 March was a beautiful spring day in Edinburgh - a great day for a second visit to the British Art Show 8, this time at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Talbot Rice, and a look at the Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporaries. Quite an ambitious schedule!

The quality and range of work at SNGMA was good - textiles, printmaking, sculpture and installations. The press had highlighted Rachel MacLean's new film 'Feed Me', a slick Grimm's fairytale-like satire on the insatiability of consumerism, scripted and played by MacLean in roles from small girl to talent show host to creepy granny. What was disturbing was not so much its blackness as the sense of sleezy, seedy, moral decrepitude. Certainly not child viewing! I thought it was perhaps a little too slick and obvious in its messaging, but hard-hitting, and left a nasty taste in the mouth nonetheless.

Some work I felt was a little bit thin. Daniel Sinsel's abstract watercolours, which, according to the statement were on similar theme of Hansel, gingerbread and consumerist gratification, did not seem to say much. At least Linder's massive tactile many-eyed spiral rug snake 'Diagrams of Love, Marriage of Eyes' was more or less self-explanatory. Margali Reus's work entitled 'Leaves', which featured five large metal 'locks' each about 40cm across protruding from the wall at head height, seemed to be less his gentle description of 'encrypted enigmatic forms' or an 'invitation to unravel, unpick or uncode' than about the intimidating implicit violence of 'big-brother' culture in which information is power. Perhaps that's what happens when you put heavy lumps of metal where viewers might concuss themselves on them... Alexandre da Cunha's woven mops, (Kentucky, 2010), referencing both labour and trade, were quirky, as were Ciara Phillips' large-scale prints created as a result of collaborative workshops. Both these exhibits, and the Andrea Buttner's densely symbolic posters of Kantian philosophy were somewhat lost by being hung in the corridor area. Mikhail Karakis's video 'Children of the Unquiet' involved children in a work interpreting a disused geothermal power station. This piece was well-received critically, but I thought it felt a little scripted. Having studied Russian for years and read Solzhenytsin's work, I was interested in Imogen Stidworthy's video installation inspired by the writer's time in a Soviet labour camp. I particularly struck by the work's aesthetic beauty - seen in a morsel of bread viewed microscopically, and the corresponding poetry in the writer's spoken Russian prose - One-nil to the creative imagination - thank goodness. 

There were two highlights that I found both thought-provoking and transformative. The first was Yuri Pattison's film 'The Ideal', exploring the contrast between our perception of 'clean' virtual technology and the poor, dirty, energy-intensive, debris-covered reality of the location in Tibet where the Bitcoin servers are run. There was no didacticism, just a real-time silent film of a few workers going about their daily tasks, mending equipment and their own clothes, tramping about in the dirt and dust. Once you knew the context the work spoke for itself, and movingly.

Dodo by Broomberg & Chanarin

Broomberg and Chanarin's 2014 installation 'Dodo', was a multi-sensorial experience. The artists place it very much in their usual context of conflict and paradox; according to them it is 'about' the destruction of a pristine coastline at San Carlos in Mexico as a result of the 1970 filming of 'Catch-22'. The film showing on a huge screen, accompanied by the quiet swish and shadows of an aeroplane propeller, and fragmented artefacts from a disinterred B-25 bomber, was created from previously unseen off-cuts of the 1970 film. The overwhelming impression for me was not of devastation but one of calm, and of the inexorable ability of nature to heal itself. I'm not sure that was the intention, but the strong emotional response evoked by the work made it one of the exhibition highlights for me.

There was time for a quick visit to the Talbot Rice Gallery, but there was nothing quite comparable there. On the way back to the station we had time to look in on the RSA New Contemporaries, the outputs of final year students selected from the top 5 Scottish art schools. There was quite a range of quality and maturity there, and quite a few pieces where concept and execution didn't quite match up.  Highlights for me were works were Corey Reid's prints and Iona Roberts strong oil paintings. 

So, a good full day out, and good coffee at the SNGMA!

Will MacLean Veering Westerly

To mark his 70th year, Will MacLean has a new retrospective, Veering Westerly. Starting at An Lanntair, then Kingussie and Wick, it is in IMAG Inverness until 26 March before moving on to Mull.

Having been unable to attend the artist's talk, I arranged to meet up with Kirsten Body, Exhibitions Co-ordinator at IMAG on 14 March, a day the museum is normally shut to the public, for a tour around the exhibition. She also showed me some of the books and catalogues collected to accompany the show.

The exhibition features works ranging more than forty years, from the 1970s to 2014, selected by MacLean for this retrospective. The show was curated and hung by Kirsten Body, and the main first floor gallery space at IMAG provides a spacious yet suitably intimate setting. At first glance the works seem eclectic - the familiar box constructions and layered panels hang alongside sculptural installations, prints, poems, mixed media collage and watercolours. The title Veering Westerly makes the accustomed reference to the sea; this exhibition, as all his work, is united by this central theme.

In MacLean's work found objects, seafaring stories, poems become the concrete starting points for narratives about imagination, culture, identity, time and place. For his detractors, MacLean is perhaps too founded in gaelic/Scottish culture, too much about the act of making, the materials. Although he has had exhibitions in the USA and Canada, is represented in London, and has various academic and other accolades, his choice of subject matter can be seen to bind him too closely to a Scottish or North Atlantic tradition. His proponents, however, among them well-known art critic and Emeritus Professor Duncan MacMillan, place MacLean's assemblages in a Surrealist tradition alongside William Johnstone and Magritte, with the artist, shaman-like, as 'an intermediary between worlds'. Sorley MacLean wrote of his art as, 'social realism transmuted with immanent and religious and surrealist images...to make a metaphor or another image as a symbol, and to do that unobtrusively or, as it were, unconsciously, is to my mind the mark of great natural power in any art.' (Foreword to Duncan MacMillan The Art of Will MacLean: Symbols of Survival, London 2002). There is a sense that MacLean's work does translate local into universal. Writing of 'Veering West', art critic Georgina Coburn comments that, 'the skills of an artist, visual poet, engineer and mariner are finely honed...his assemblages of objects cast ashore on eternal tides of human history feel strangely comforting...it's this transcendental quality of the specifically local and deeply personal, expanded to the universal, which distinguishes and elevates MacLean's work' (http://georginacoburnarts.co.uk/category/will-maclean/). What MacLean himself says is that he reacted against the solipcism of contemporary art, preferring to start from a grounding in real place and culture, and, like the Surrealists, working with the 'autonomous world of the imagination.'

All of these responses are in my mind as I spend time in the gallery. As I look around I quickly see why Andrew Patrizio, ECA's Professor of Scottish Visual Culture, characterises MacLean's work as revealing 'three particular kinds of time that merge together' - 'historic time', 'craft time' and 'mineral time.' (Essay for exhibition Gleaned and Gathered, Art First, 2014).

By the entrance 'Fladday Reliquary' (1978), from IMAG's own collection, is a box construction on darkened boat-boards with a white gannet skull placed within a wooden niche and edged with rusted fishing hooks. The 'reliquary', traditionally a repository for saints' bones, is a common motif in MacLean's work, used to raise to almost votive status artefacts of indigenous gaelic identity.






Memory Board (mixed media and found materials)

Nearby, the fifteen panel 'Bottle Beach Settlement' series (1988) makes reference to even earlier, prehistoric time. A buried cache of small 19th-century bottles found on Lewis and cast in resin are a linking theme; each panel records and incorporates an aspect of the context of the find - flint, salt, bone and metal. Together the pieces create a quasi-archaeological timeline denoting time and continuity, from stone to bronze age towards the present day.

Over one broad wall 'Nomad Trace' (2011) is a large mixed-media construction on two white-painted fibreglass panels, with small burial-cist-like niches holding bones and created artefacts of human survival.

Opposite this, in an altarpiece-like boxed assemblage of painted toys and pudding-dolls, is a piece apparently of a more current historical nature, 'The Archaeology of Childhood- reworked' (1989, reworked 2012)

Again of a more personal nature is 'Study for Skye Fisherman - In Memoriam', a semi-abstract painting suggesting a figure in oilskin, the preparation for a final mixed-media work of 1989 dedicated to his Uncle William, who lost at sea.

Another piece where story is entangled with making is 'Crotal Box', a mixed-media commission for the RSA, which makes reference to an incident in which a tweed jacket was not permitted on a fishing boat because it had been dyed with crotal lichen.

Two series of collaborations with poets complement these very physical pieces. MacLean has worked with prominent poets over the years, including Angus Martin, Sorley MacLean and George Campbell Hay. In 'A Catechism of the Law of Storms', a collaboration with the poet John Burnside, MacLean's twelve screen prints are engravings found in the London Times of 1880 and reworked into surreal collages. Burnside then interpreted these images into fine poems that seem to relate to real events, including Song of a Storm Wave, Storm-Bird Harbinger, Towards the Voice of Night and Apparition of the Re-drowned. The second collaboration is with Kenneth White in a series of poems and paintings. In this case, the poems preceded MacLean's small watercolours, which have a simple fluency and energy that is a good counterpoint to the somewhat heavy sculptural works.

What is abundantly clear is that MacLean's works cannot be read quickly or superficially; each piece incorporates layers of symbolism and thought into a lengthy process of making. Through them he reimagines the many mythologies of maritime culture, his 'Cardinal Points' from sea reliquaries and whaling and fishing, to emigration and arctic exploration.


In addition to the two poetry collaborations there are two pieces that stand out for me. The first is fairly simple. Entitled 'Memory Board', it is a piece of boat rudder set on end, painted and inscribed in tiny script with the names of boats leaving the port of Stornoway. I like the simplicity of the concept, the hidden narratives suggested by the text and the construction of the piece, which seems to be half-seascape, half totem.





The second is a series of three pieces entitled Atlantic Messengers- Sula Sgeir, Hirta and Fulmarus (1998, mixed media, each 158 x 52 x 31cm.) While these installations are intricate, somewhat heavy in construction and clearly dense in symbolic significance, they are also intriguing to look at. Each one has a similar open shrine-like form, hung with 'offerings' shaped like small transparent bladders. They resemble the artefacts of a tribal culture. Closer inspection reveals that 'Fulmaris' contains a fulmar skull, oil sack and feather, representing the fulmar oil that provided the St Kilda population with light. 'Hirta' includes the fragment of a love song from St Kilda, and 'Sula Sgeir' makes reference to a nun who died on the island and whose skeleton was later found with a bird nesting in her breast bone. Their common theme is the miniature bladder-like messenger 'boats' that were set adrift at the mercy of wind and tide to carry messages from St Kilda to the outside world. While one might wish to relegate these pieces as nostalgic relics of a lost culture or as items of mere local historical interest, this would be to miss something of their significance. The strength of MacLean's work is that there is nothing artificial or glib about it. Of course these pieces speak of the real challenges of a particular place and time. But in bringing to mind those challenges, they stand counter to all that is fluffy and shallow in our increasingly virtual world. Perhaps, as well as reminding of the fragility of a lost society (St Kilda), they call into question the real durability of what we call civilisation.

Iceland!

Last year I did a module with Roxane Permar up in Shetland called 'Art and Social Practice'. I wasn't sure what to expect, except that it would be well out of my comfort zone, and that's usually a good thing.

In the end, the power of it really impressed me. I really love the way that everyone has a creative imagination. If you're able to help them tap into that, as an artist, and 'nudge' a process along with a collaborative arts project, then the outcomes can be incredibly powerful, and completely unpredictable. I worked with the local primary school on 'Project Wild Millbuie' to unlock the 'Wild' in them by building a relationship with a forest. What I found was the whole was way more than the sum of its parts, and we were all changed in some way by the creative process.

So when Roxane was seeking applications for the Iceland leg of the international collaborative arts project Northern Exchange: Cold War Histories and Nuclear Futures (http://timespan.org.uk/explore/artists/northern-exchange-roxane-permar-susan-timmins/) I thought I'd go for it. The project has already worked with communities in Russia and Alaska as well as Scotland and England. By luck, and perhaps because I am well old enough to remember the Cold War first hand (and lived in Russia for a couple of years) I managed to get one of the two student places on the trip!

The project is an international, collaborative, community based art project which will conclude with an exhibition and related public events in Reykjavik. Roxane and Susan are working with two artists who also teach at universities, Asta Jonsdottir (Iceland Academy of Arts) and Elina Harkinen (University of Lapland, Rovaniem, Finland)i. Each artist plans to bring two students from their respective universities to take part in the project.

The team will use methods drawn from socially engaged and place based art practices to explore the Cold War period as it exists physically in the landscape and in the memory. In Iceland we will work with participants in four remote communities, which in common with many other northern and Arctic
populations, hosted radar installations as part of NATO’s early warning defence system thus putting them in the front line for defence during the Cold War.

The project offers students the opportunity to learn new skills in socially engaged and place-based art practices by assisting the international team of artists who themselves will be working in new contexts and situations. Students can also gain understanding of our northern neighbours in the context of our
Cold War past and nuclear futures.


The next challenge is to find funding for the flights and food. I think I may have to take my tent!!!

dipping in to British Art Show 8 - and an interview

Sunday 21st I had an unexpected two hours in Edinburgh and took the chance to visit Inverleith House to see part of the British Art Show 8. Inverleith House is a beautiful Georgian house built in 1773 with classical restraint and situated in what is now the Royal Botanic Gardens. I think it is the perfect size for a gallery - not too large to tire the viewer and with high-ceilinged classical rooms that give the art space to breathe. Eleven of the 42 BAS 8 artists are featured there. Of the three BAS 8 venues, this is the one I choose because it includes Bedwyr Williams, of whom critics have been positive, textiles by Caroline Achaintre and ceramics by Jesse Wine. 

I am intrigued. Critical reviews of BAS 8 have been mixed, and I want to see for myself what curators Anna Colin and Lydia Yee have chosen as the 'best of British art' of the last five years. 

In the entrance hall I am attracted by a series of 2-D ceramic heads in profile by Jesse Wine, each with a small motif - a fish,  an eggcup. They are simple in concept and do not need explanation, each exuding its own personality. The first large room is dominated by two large 2-D Jesse Wine ceramics, one 'Still Life' (2015 1.9m x 2.7m), echoing the work of Giorgio Morandi, but with an autobiographical touch in the form of a Sports Direct mug. The second 'The whole vibe of everything' (2015) draws on the images of a stork and a branch from an old Japanese print. These pieces are less overtly tactile, accessible and child-like than much of Wine's work. I find them a little self-conscious and less immediately expressive than I expected of Wine's ceramics.

Jesse Wine 'the whole vibe of everything' (2015)

Nearby Bedwyr Williams' film 'Century Egg' looms ridiculously larger-than-life on a wide black screen set within a large broken eggshell made of some obviously artificial substance. The comedy stage is set, but the film itself leaves a mixed impression. Its starting point is the bog man 'Tollund Man', played by Williams, lying in slimy archaeological situ, musing on how a future archaeologist will interpret the artefacts of a Cambridge drinks party ('what if they were all struck down while doing a sedate conga'). The dense, almost impenetrable, combination of surreal associations, laboured philosophical musings and random imagery is, well, rather long. There are some memorable moments - the Wallace and Gromit-like on-off switch denoting the passage of time, the surreal Chinese black egg served to the disgust of the guests, the shots of rocks from large to electron-microscope scale, the classical sculptures that look to Williams like they have 'big sweat and big breath'. There are some interesting statements that tempt critical unpicking - 'how long would we have to keep shaping until all the rocks were something that we'd shaped'. However, I notice that none of the visitors watches the film for more than ten seconds or so. Patiently, I sit through most of it, but even I, with an assignment to think of, find suddenly that I cannot devote a second more of my life to it. The witty Williams is apparently motivated not by his own cleverness, but by the satisfaction that the parody of art-science he has created will force art critics to sit still and strain their intellects for a seemingly impossible period. I wonder to myself how many did...

With some relief I glance at Pablo Bronstein's monochrome 18thC architectural wallpapers, their clean lines stretching from floor to ceiling. At least they give you space to think. Two arty looking middle-aged women walk past me, returning to the front door. I take the opportunity to interview them about the show. They are distinctly underwhelmed. One is a painter, the other has a daughter who is an artist. Both have visited twice, and greatly enjoyed, the RSA Open Exhibition of contemporary work (RSA 28 Nov 2015 - 14 Feb 2016). The painter says of BAS 8, 'It's too arty, up its a..., too cerebral... the materials don't connect, they don't reflect our place on the planet'. Her friend says, 'I need to feed a strong connection to a piece that makes me feel connected to everything. I am not getting that here.'

I seek out the next room hopefully, with Caroline Achaintre's shaggy tufted canvas tribal textiles large on the wall. They are, according to the statement, 'the uncomfortable middle-ground' between figuration and abstraction, attraction and repulsion. They look uncannily like tasteless 70s shag pile rugs that have seen a bit of wear. The yarn has a 70s appearance, not pure wool, not well-coloured but half-faded poor-quality chemical dyes. I can see they might have an element of humour in them, a parody of a 70s aesthetic  perhaps? I find them more repulsive than attractive, and I wonder if repulsion is the desired emotional response.  Yet it is not even real repulsion - they just seem to have something a little tired about them. On the floor are Anthea Hamilton's large perspex cut-outs of sexualised pop icons which, on closer inspection, have ants crawling along inside them, reminiscent of the children's section of the natural history museum. 

In the basement is a dark room, closed to children, where 'The Foundation', a film by Patrick Staff,  is running. The film explores homoeroticism and gender/ transgender identities through stylised mime and dance. There is no humour and quite a lot of implicit violence. The dark set and shabby 50s objects give a powerfully squalid feel that, with the sexual overtones, is both sleazy and disturbing. 

Upstairs is a room with several old-fashioned black TV sets with white words flashing on them - the names of race horses apparently. The TV wires trail depressingly across the floor. I just don't get it and something about the room makes me want to leave. I notice that not a single person spends any time in this room. Whatever it is Charlotte Rodger wants to say remains, deliberately or otherwise, in the happily irrelevant realm of superfluous information.

Across the hall I am struck by what I take to be three attractive abstracts, entitled 'Fabulous Beasts'. Looking more closely I see that the Berlin-based artist Simon Fujiwara has shaved the hair off fur coats and stretched the meticulously sewn fragments of skin over frames. I like these quiet enigmatic pieces that seem to hold a tactile beauty in their own nakedness. They require no explanation, but speak of the labour involved in creating luxury items. His 10 minute film 'Hello', created from overlapping interviews with a Mexican rubbish picker and a middle-class German computer expert, 'illustrates' his concept. I prefer the understatement of the fur coats. 

Finally, I find a small back room, almost tripping over the enamelled construction pipework of Nicolas Deshayes 'Becoming Soil'. The metal and plastic pipes are decorated with enamel to give an impression of some natural process occurring. According to the statement, Deshayes modifies the surfaces of pristine materials to make them look, 'toxic or contaminated and therefore closer to something corporeal'.  They look like pipes with enamel on them to me, neither contaminated nor particularly corporeal. 

In the last back room, monochrome images move on a screen.  I sit down and am drawn into James Richards' film 'Raking Light'. For the full 7 minutes and 5 seconds I am rapt. Each image demands close looking and has a beauty to it. Rather than struggling to disentangle a concept, I am instinctively aware that this is a work simply about the act of looking.  Perhaps I am attracted by the abstracted images of the natural world, or by the use of light, movement, texture, scale. Whatever it is, I certainly find a strong emotional response that short-circuits the cerebral but does not discount it. 

On balance, I think I agree with the lady I interviewed. However interesting or clever the concept, I need also to feel an emotional connection to engage with the art. I wonder if that intangible quality has something to do with the way in which each creator approaches the making process.