Visual Art, Reviews

Chinese Contemporary Art - Asking for It

8 May 2008

China has become something of a cause célèbre in contemporary art market circles. Tales abound of international collectors swooping in to snap up entire bodies of work, leaving artists with empty studios and considerably enriched bank accounts. Whether…

Jonathan Monk

8 May 2008

INSTALLATION, SCULPTURE, PAINTING Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 18 May ‘Something No Less Important Than Nothing’ and ‘Nothing No Less Important Than Something’ are the first Scottish shows by Jonathan Monk in a decade, though actually it’s the same…

Melanie Gilligan

8 May 2008

PERFORMANCE AND INSTALLATION Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 10 May This exhibition by London-based artist and writer Melanie Gilligan takes place not in the usual Transmission gallery, but in an upper Wasps studio space opposite. The…

Records Played Backwards

8 May 2008

GROUP SHOW The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 10 May Just like the teenager in the 80s playing his or her Iron Maiden records in reverse while hoping to hear Satanic messages, the artists in this group exhibition busy themselves trying to find…

Alasdair Gray

24 Apr 2008

Sometimes it’s more fun to ignore the explanatory gallery text and have a good look at the work. This seems an obvious enough way of dealing with art objects, but usually makes for lazy viewing and reviewing on the part of the critic. But it is…

Jim Lambie: Forever Changes

24 Apr 2008

SCULPTURE AND INSTALLATION Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Mon 29 Sep Lambie seems to be an ideal choice for the Gallery of Modern Art’s contribution to the Glasgow International, particularly given his established international reputation yet…

Kalup Linzy

24 Apr 2008

FILM, PERFORMANCE AND PAINTING Washington Garcia, Glasgow, until Sun 27 Apr New-York based Kalup Linzy is more Vaginal Davis than a ‘Paris is Burning’ starlet, more Judy la Bruce (Bruce’s alter-ego) than Hedwig. But it cannot be denied that all of…

Maternity: Images of Motherhood

24 Apr 2008

PAINTING, PRINT, SCULPTURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Sun 22 Jun This exhibition takes us down the well-trodden path of ‘maternity in art’ and, for the most part, succeeds in eliciting ideas beyond the…

Adel Abdessemed: Trust Me

24 Apr 2008

REVIEW VIDEO, DRAWING AND INSTALLATION The Common Guild, Glasgow until Sat 7 Jun One of Adel Abdessemed’s videos was rejected by the Gi’s committee for this exhibition due to its excessive violence. This further cemented his reputation as an artist…

Ernst Caramelle

24 Apr 2008

PAINTING AND MIXED MEDIA Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 17 May Constructed from arrangements of geometric shapes, Caramelle’s paintings exhibit a judicious use of colour, which he uses to manipulate the illusion of perspective and space. While these…

Group Show: Run 'Run'

24 Apr 2008

SCULPTURE, FILM AND DRAWING The Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, until Sat 3 May There has always been an indubitable relationship between art and science. A charcoal mark made on a cave wall is the result of various scientific…

Arctic Circus and Skylights

16 Apr 2008

Edinburgh Printmakers seem to be inviting comparison between two solo exhibitions exploring Northern light, relying on the cantilever of their difference. But it’s the common thread of exploration that elevates both. Lithographer Gill Tyson’s…

Street + Gallery

National Gallery Complex, until Sun 4 May

10 Apr 2008

We walk past them everyday. Some of us slow down briefly and spare a few coins. But how many of us slow down and spare a thought for their hopes, dreams and concerns. For the ‘Street + Gallery’ outreach exhibition The National Galleries of Scotland…

EJ Major: Try to do things we all can understand

10 Apr 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY, PRINTS AND FILM Street Level, Glasgow, until Sat 10 May Photographs capture nothing. Portraits are even more successful at framing the absence at the core of subjectivity and how this can be signified through the image. This is neither as…

Enrico David: Ultra Paste

10 Apr 2008

INSTALLATION, SCULPTURE AND PAINTINGS Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 10 May It’s hard to believe the ejaculatory inference of the title of this exhibition is unintended, because the whole purpose of ‘Ultra Paste’ (the show’s key work) seems…

From Sickert to Gertler: Modern British Art from Boxted House

10 Apr 2008

PAINTING/WORKS ON PAPER NGMA, Edinburgh, until Sun 22 Jun This exhibition celebrates the lives of Bobby and Natalie Bevan, whose Essex home Boxted House contained numerous works by prominent 20th century modernists. It also showcases the work of…

James Green: You Are Still Here

27 Mar 2008

PAINTING AND MIXED MEDIA Corn Exchange Gallery, Edinburgh, until Thu 10 Apr John Merrick, otherwise known as ‘The Elephant Man’, is the unusual starting point for Royal College of Art graduate James Green’s first solo exhibition in Scotland. What from…

Maximilian Zentz Zlomovitz: Waiting for Maleism

27 Mar 2008

INSTALLATION Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 5 Apr The title an artist gives to an exhibition can act as a manifesto, and Maximilian Zentz Zlomovitz’s ‘Waiting for Maleism’ is no exception. He’s asking for trouble. The work on show comprises installed…

Torsten Lauschmann

27 Mar 2008

PHOTOGRAPHS, INSTALLATION AND SCULPTURE GoMA, Glasgow, until Mon 26 May It’s difficult to pin down Glasgow-based Torsten Lauschmann’s work. All attempts to create a narrative or to find some kind of justification or single intention fail. This is the…

Go west: Print The Legend

13 Mar 2008

The idea of the American West once stretched out like a great virginal expanse of prairie, a fantasy only limited by imagination and the Pacific Ocean. This myth is not only an American obsession, but one that the whole western genre film-viewing world…

GROUP SHOW, Doggerfisher

13 Mar 2008

Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, until Sat 26 Apr Doggerfisher’s annual group show brings together work by recent graduates and more established artists. Refreshingly, the gallery unites the six artists via an interest in formal concerns with space and…

Let Me Show You Some Things: The Magic Lantern, Robert Orchardson and Sarah Tripp

13 Mar 2008

This collaborative installation brings together a large collection of films previously shown at The Magic Lantern (an independent film night at the CCA), a new film by Sarah Tripp and sculptures by Robert Orchardson. The short film format is ideally…

Luke Fowler: Bogman Palmjaguar

13 Mar 2008

In his new 30-minute film, titled after an eccentric subject who sees himself as being in symbolic union with the great cat, Glasgow filmmaker Luke Fowler manages to combine measured storytelling with a readjusted idea of documentary realism. Bogman…

Ansel Adams: Celebration of Genius

28 Feb 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sat 19 Apr The natural ecological bent with which Ansel Adams’ work is infused means that a show like this could never be more timely, and many might read a somewhat sombre note in his otherwise…

Craig Mulholland

28 Feb 2008

In an exhibition that spans three venues, and will morph into an even larger installation in Bristol later this year, Craig Mulholland’s Grandes et Petites Machines, which comprises sculptures, constructed ‘paintings’ and films, fills the Mackintosh…

Joanna Kane: The Somnambulists

28 Feb 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 6 Apr This small exhibition features newly commissioned photographs by Joanna Kane of the collection of 19th century life and death masks currently on loan to the National Portrait Gallery.

Lotte Gertz

28 Feb 2008

PRINTING, DRAWING AND PAINTING Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 1 Mar It can be difficult to form a strong opinion about work that comes across as insubstantial and ‘bitty’. This may seem an obvious thing to say about the collages on show by Lotte Gertz…

Nick Evans and Tony Swain

28 Feb 2008

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE Inverleith House, Edinburgh, until Sun 20 Apr Two Glasgow-based artists have been brought together and seemingly linked by their aptitude for and interest in the process of making. It gives this exhibition an appealing rawness…

Stephen Healy: Ethereal

28 Feb 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY Streetlevel, Glasgow, until Sat 22 Mar The large photographs by Stephen Healy at Streetlevel continue his interventions into remote locations, in the form of sculptural installations, site-specific artworks and photo-based projects. This…

Them: Artur Zmijewski

28 Feb 2008

VIDEO AND INSTALLATION The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 22 Mar Polish filmmaker Artur Zmijewski has established an international reputation and this film, ‘Them’, was originally shown at Documenta 12. The film is a documentary ‘social…

Camilla Low: Straight Letters

14 Feb 2008

SCULPTURE DCA, Dundee, until Sun 30 Mar Despite receiving her education at Glasgow School of Art, this is the first major solo exhibition in the UK by Norwegian sculptor Camilla Low. With this in mind it’s fortunate that a venue the size of the DCA is…

Live Undead

14 Feb 2008

PAINTING Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 23 Feb This ambitious show, curated by Michael Hill Johnston, brings together a century of paintings on the subject of portraiture from both Scottish and international artists. Live Undead boasts…

Split Personality - Alan Michael

31 Jan 2008

Rosie Lesso creates an imaginative map of associations as she considers the work of painter Alan Michael Like many artists before him, Alan Michael’s first point of reference is the sea of visual information we encounter as by-products of…

Kendall Koppe and Douglas Morland: The Great Release

31 Jan 2008

PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND PRINT The Intermedia space is a slippery fish, but it is usually worth trying to land the thing. The exhibition by Kendall Koppe and Douglas Morland is a case in point. The work on show deals with aspects of subjectivity that…

Spencer Sweeny

31 Jan 2008

PAINTING There’s less shtick and more confidence in this exhibition of paintings by New York-based artist Spencer Sweeney. The freewheeling, almost accidental approach to image-making that the artist employed in his previous exhibition in the space…

Collage City

17 Jan 2008

PAINTING, SCULPTURE, PRINTMAKING, PHOTOGRAPHY Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 24 Feb This latest offering from the Dean Gallery has drawn a number of key works out from the Gallery of Modern Art’s permanent collection to create an unassuming and…

Donald Urquhart

17 Jan 2008

While this exhibition of drawings by Edinburgh-based Donald Urquhart, who is more commonly associated with sculptural public art projects such as ‘The Sanctuary’ at Edinburgh’s New Royal Infirmary, is billed as covering the period 1977–2007, that’s…

Anthea Hamilton and Thomas Kratz

4 Jan 2008

INSTALLED PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES Mary Mary, Glasgow, until 26 Jan There is a history of sexed-up artistic collaborations in 20th century art, a long line of cosy twosomes that come together for occasional aesthetic satisfaction. The work on show by…

Carol Rhodes

4 Jan 2008

Carol Rhodes’ meditative, repetitive approach to landscape painting could be linked to artists such as Friedrich, Corot, Monet or Cezanne, each in their own way sharing an obsession with the genre, though, as the artist Merlin James points out: ‘Rhodes…

Joan Eardley

4 Jan 2008

PAINTING Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until Sun 13 Jan The peculiar psychology which leads many notable artists’ works to only truly be appreciated after they have died is hard to explain, with the premature passing of an artist lending an…

Weirding and the Uncanny

13 Dec 2007

Curated by Glasgow School of Art MFA student Levi Haines, and featuring contributors from GSA, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh’s Embassy Gallery and Haines’ native Portland, Oregon, the show is tightly-packed and busy. It’s impossible to retain some…

Group show: Re-make/Re-model

13 Dec 2007

Contemporary art curators and gallery owners no longer merely show work because it’s good but because it somehow justifies itself through weighty themes and explication. This is art’s loss. The exhibition of work by Linder, Sophie MacPherson, Babette…

Quentin Blake

29 Nov 2007

ILLUSTRATION Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, until Tue 1 Jan When you take an illustration away from the text it was created for, the lone image can quickly become a very dire prospect or can leave the viewer scratching their head…

Monika Sosnowska: Display

29 Nov 2007

INSTALLATION / SCULPTURE Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 8 Dec Stripping architecture of its purpose and concentrating purely on the aesthetic possibilities of public space, the work of Monika Sosnowska plays games with the formalities of…

Roman Signer - Action man

29 Nov 2007

Since the 1970s Swiss artist Roman Signer has been making eccentric kinetic art, enlivening both himself and found objects with elemental forces such as wind, fire, water or explosives. At first glance, Signer’s clowning around seems to lack substance…

Ten Decades

29 Nov 2007

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sat 19 Jan Like a weighty history text, this commemorative retrospective, celebrating the centenary of Edinburgh College of Art, is exhausting. While seepage thankfully dapples its linear…

Tom Phillips - Word and image

15 Nov 2007

In 1966 the artist Tom Phillips went on a shopping expedition in Peckham, casually looking for a book to play with and adapt. Chance led him to a copy of WH Mallock’s A Human Document, an obscure and relatively forgotten Victorian novel, which the…

Gillespie, Kidd and Coia: 1956–1987

15 Nov 2007

ARCHITECTURE The Lighthouse, Glasgow, until Sun 10 Feb It’s always difficult to review an architecture exhibition. Do you focus on the realised buildings or the sketches, blueprints and models on show and the way they are presented? At first…

Keith Farquhar

15 Nov 2007

ARTIST-CURATED SHOW Embassy, Edinburgh, until Sun 18 Nov Blurring the line between curation and creation, this new show by Edinburgh artist Keith Farquhar exists – as the artist himself states – to serve as ‘advertisements’ for the work of Henri…

Marjolaine Ryley

15 Nov 2007

PHOTOGRAPHY Street Level, Glasgow, until Sat 22 Dec The exhibition of photos by Sunderland-based Marjolaine Ryley at Street Level does exactly what we now expect photography to do in the eternally expansive post-modern moment – register and present…

Ori Gersht

15 Nov 2007

PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM Stills, Edinburgh, until Sun 20 Jan In the dark back section of the bisected Stills space, Ori Gersht’s video installation ‘The Forest’ intermittently emits the overwhelming roar of trees being felled. Meanwhile, a series of…

Smith/Stewart: Enter Love and Enter Death

15 Nov 2007

SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION Royal Botanic Gardens, Inverleith House, Edinburgh, until Sun 20 Jan Simply entering Smith/Stewart’s new exhibition is difficult. Faced directly with a black horizontal girder, one feels tempted to advance, yet hesitant.

Spanning the void

1 Nov 2007

Think of post-war Eastern European modernisation and what comes to mind? Invariably, it is the drab, rashly executed housing blocks, service pavilions, train stations and shopping centres that inspire Monika Sosnowska, leading the Polish artist to…

Staff Show: Borders, Crossings and Settlements

1 Nov 2007

The fourth annual exhibition of staff talent at GSA presents an extremely patchy round-up of photographs, prints, and electronic media by a collection of some of the school’s technicians. The show includes work by eight artists: Stephen Jackson, Ian…

Johanna Billing

18 Oct 2007

FILM AND INSTALLATION Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, until Sun 4 Nov There are many ways of going round an exhibition. Some might favour a more linear, systematic approach, whilst others prefer to flit around randomly, driven by intuition. But…

Raphael Danke

18 Oct 2007

It’s hard not to use clichés when talking about good art, but it cannot be denied that the simplest ideas well executed often guarantee quality. This notion is certainly true of the work of Raphael Danke at Sorcha Dallas, where a series of collages…

Alasdair Gray - art review

4 Oct 2007

To cherry pick from one’s own oeuvre sounds delightfully painful, a self indulgent task requiring sticky fingers and a good eye. It should be someone else’s enviable job, especially when the artist in question is Alasdair Gray, one of Scotland’s most…

Duncan Marquiss: The Clay Wall

4 Oct 2007

To see our insides on the outside disrupts our idea of self. Blood and vomit repulse us because they muddy our notions of the self/other split, and expose the fragile nature of our subjectivity. It is this state of troubled subjecthood, and most…

Gary Fabian Miller & Edmund de Wall

4 Oct 2007

Repetition, when performed by the human hand, will always be peppered with tiny differences. This is evidence of man’s failing against the machine, yet there is, of course, unexpected pleasure to be found in human error. It is a subject of fascination…

Dan Miller: Stockade

20 Sep 2007

DRAWING, SCULPTURE AND PAINTING Studio Warehouse, Glasgow, until 24 Sep One has to wade through the familiar sophomoric references to modernist architecture, ‘dazzle’ camouflage and death to arrive at the germ of what is an interesting talent, in the…

Richard Strachan

20 Sep 2007

PAINTING Amber Roome, Edinburgh, until Thu 4 Oct As verdigris slices through neon lime, which in turn is edged with bright jade, Richard Strachan’s pragmatically titled ‘Green/Yellow’, becomes a crystalline image that seems to take you deep into the…

Scott Myles - Askit

20 Sep 2007

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING It would be wrong to immediately dismiss the new work on show by Scott Myles at the Modern Institute at first glance, as your initial aesthetic reaction will be incorrect. It may seem overly dramatic to say that the painted…

Clare Stephenson: Bandaged Heads

6 Sep 2007

After a successful exhibition as part of a group show of work at Stirling’s Changing Room, Clare Stephenson returns to Glasgow to continue her examination of performativity and the exaggerated poses that we adopt in our everyday lives. These new…

Sally Osborn: Oh Ha Hmm

6 Sep 2007

The metaphorical and actual preciousness of Sally Osborn’s previous sculptural work has been crushed under the onslaught of an expanding self-confidence in the work on show at Glasgow Sculpture Studios. It is overly simplistic to read a surer sense of…

Touching the void

6 Sep 2007

There’s something about the term ‘the void’ that grates ever so slightly. The mention of it conjures up, at best, the Jungian notion that we humans are empty vessels into which experience is poured. The term is so overused that when you meet it in the…

Voluntary Action

6 Sep 2007

It’s now ten years since Stirling’s small artist/volunteer-run space The Changing Room opened its doors. In that time it has provided a supportive platform for emerging and established talent from Scotland and beyond. The continuing success of this…

Nathan Coley

23 Aug 2007

Be careful when entering this exhibition – a sturdy strip of wood runs right across the entrance just high enough to trip unsuspecting visitors flat onto the floor. This is not a health and safety oversight but artist Nathan Coley’s intervention…

Richard Long: Walking and Marking

16 Aug 2007

Even at 60, Richard Long is a towering, physical man. He has trekked across the Sahara, Lapland, and the Himalayas, crossed Ireland in 12 days and lost himself in the Gobi desert and the Norwegian wilderness. For the past 40 years Long has been making…

Sally Osborn

16 Aug 2007

It seems that low-impact art can sometimes hit the hardest. Minimalist canvases can cause an immediate reaction that seems to contradict the apparently modest intentions of the artist. Often you do not need bold brushstrokes or controversial subject…

William Eggleston: Portraits 1974

16 Aug 2007

No matter what decade you were brought up in, the 1970s are absolutely dripping with glossy, honey-hued nostalgia. And it’s exactly this kitschy, colour-saturated era that William Eggleston has captured in his 1974 photographs on show at Inverleith…

Chongbin Park

1 Aug 2007

South Korean born artist Chongbin Park moved to London in recent years, and the sense of fragility and alienation he feels as a foreigner within the city has formed the backbone to much of his recent practice.

Hitlist: Festival Art

1 Aug 2007

The best exhibitions in the Edinburgh Festival

Group Show: Lutz Fezer, Kevin Hutcheson & Clunie Reid

Transmission, Glasgow, until Sat 12 May

23 Apr 2007

WORK ON PAPER A grid work of duct tape only heightens the sense of fetishisation across Clunie Reid’s ‘Something Bold, Something Insane, Something Snivelled, Something True’ that pulls you in from the street and into a flood of familiar imagery at…

Neil Clements: Paranoid

SouthSide Studios, Fridge Gallery, Glasgow (viewing by appointment Sat 14-Sun 29 Apr)

23 Apr 2007

PAINTING AND INSTALLATION The small, dimly lit Fridge gallery acts like a mausoleum for Glasgow-based Neil Clements to create a painting, light and sound installation that takes an image of Op Art heroine Bridget Riley and the emergence of the…

Graham Fagen: Downpresser

GoMA, Glasgow, until Mon 28 May

9 Apr 2007

PHOTOGRAPHY, SCREEN PRINTS, FILM INSTALLATION It’s difficult to discern exactly what Graham Fagen is getting at with his new installation of photographs, screen prints and DVD projections at GoMA. The exhibition, entitled Downpresser, is a personal…

Wael Shawky: Al Aqsa Park

Collective Offsite, Sat 31 Mar

9 Apr 2007

FILM INSTALLATION ‘I do not intend to control the viewer,’ says Egyptian artist Wael Shawky, ‘but rather to construct the work in a precise fashion where every element is controlled.’ But when Collective herded its audience onto two buses destined…

Martin Boyce

Martin Boyce:

27 Mar 2007

SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION There is a well documented shift in American art from the late 50s to the 70s with artists creating work that slots right into the machine that is the museum like a mass produced cog. Large, hard-edged paintings and minimalist…

Rob Churm

Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, until Tue 10 Apr

27 Mar 2007

DRAWING It isn’t clear if the drawings by Rob Churm are automatic outpourings or skillfully composed, surreal sketches - it’s more likely that the highly worked and patterned drawings by the Glasgow-based artist fall somewhere between the two.

Body Parts 3

RSA, Edinburgh, run ended

13 Mar 2007

PERFORMANCE The essence of performance art is its unpredictability. From the medium’s rise in the 1960s and 70s with early shock tactics, such as artist Chris Burden’s infamous ‘Shoot’ where the artist was shot in the arm at close range, to work like…

Kate Dove & Victoria Morton

Light and Dark

13 Mar 2007

Kate Dove is a sculptor turned animator, who paints. Victoria Morton avoids representation but insists she does not paint abstract canvases. Luckily, this slightly confusing cross pollinated bouquet of disciplines cannot be felt in their work shown at…

La Femme de Nulle Part - Group Show

Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, until Sat 28 Apr

13 Mar 2007

FILM, SCULPTURE AND PRINTS In the past, any woman who wandered from the respectable path, or whose intelligence dared question the male forces that be, was usually then classified as an unholy hysteric, and was either excommunicated or ‘treated…

Nick Evans: Rational Slab

Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 14 Apr

13 Mar 2007

SCULPTURE Nick Evans’ last exhibition at Sorcha Dallas was one of the highlights of 2005. But the new work on show at Mary Mary, created after his enormously successful residency and exhibition at Tate St Ives in 2006, further develops many of the…

Simon Carroll

Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde, Glasgo

13 Mar 2007

CERAMICS, PAINTING AND PRINTS The alchemy and leap of imagination that’s involved when throwing, decorating and firing a humble pot is not to be underestimated. Each glaze - whether ice-cream pink or emerald green - begins life as inert grey swill…

Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Wayward Thinker

Trenton Doyle Hancock:

13 Mar 2007

PAINTING DRAWING SCULPTURE Trenton Doyle Hancock is a storyteller and mythmaker - a highbrow comic book artist struggling with a complex psyche and an unruly inner child. His conviction is admirable, developing a narrative based on characters that…

Alison Watt - The dark fold

The dark fold

27 Feb 2007

If the substance of all painting is light, then artist Alison Watt has got a dark sense of humour. Perhaps best known for her luminous oil paintings of shapely white calico fabrics and creamy brocade drapes, Watt has quietly spent two years creating her…

Jurergen Teller – Awailable

Jurergen Teller - Awailable

27 Feb 2007

PHOTOGRAPHY Being held up as a revolutionary is too often a bittersweet plaudit, as for every voice championing your revolutionary zeal there are others queuing up to stake their claim first or rubbish the argument. Such praise has cast no shadow on…

Never Still

CCA, Glasgow, Fri 16 Feb

27 Feb 2007

FILM Never Still marked the first public art event sponsored by Map magazine, and brought together work by a host of respected international artists who primarily use film (video or digital) as their medium. The event highlighted some of the problems…

Nick Crowe – Commemorative Glass

CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 31 Mar

27 Feb 2007

SCULPTURE AND DRAWING It’s difficult to figure out what Crowe hopes to achieve by his exhibition at the CCA in Glasgow. There is no conceptual cohesion, no base (however shifting and rolling) that can be perceived to be unifying such disparate work.

Ahlam Shibli

Everyday war

12 Feb 2007

Shibli’s lens attends to the bleak realities of Palestinian identities lived within Israel and the Occupied Territories. Born in Galilee, which became part of Israel in 1948, Shibli explores the topographical and emotional contradictions of people…

Aron Tarjani and Miranda Whall: If I Open My Eyes I Might See Teeth

Washington Garcia, Glasgow, run ended

12 Feb 2007

VIDEO INSTALLATION The second offering from the Glasgow artist-run collective Washington Garcia brings together video and film work by Hungarian artist Aron Tarjani and Cardiff-based Miranda Whall. (Their first exhibition, a month ago, featured…

Charlie Hammond

Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, until Sat 3 Mar

12 Feb 2007

PAINTINGS, SCULPTURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY There is both an undeniable sense of conceptual precision and a wicked sense of humour informing the work of Charlie Hammond at Sorcha Dallas. The selection of work on display bears the marks of its making - but…

Edward Dolnick

Stealing the Scream (Icon Books)

12 Feb 2007

ART HISTORY The title of Edward Dolnick’s light-hearted look at art history is misleading. This is less about the theft of Munch’s classic The Scream and more the tale of its saviour: policeman Charley Hill. The author worked with Hill to get the…

Group Show: Hot Rock

Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 24 Feb

12 Feb 2007

DRAWING, SCULPTURE AND INSTALLATION Seven international artists question the cultural value of the very recent past and an always uncertain future in Hot Rock at the Transmission. The show brings together work by Monika Grzymala, Andreas Hofer, Brian…

Peter Howson - Andrew: Portrait of a Saint

City Arts Centre, Edinburgh, until Sun 4 Mar

12 Feb 2007

PAINTING DRAWING Peter Howson’s recent works have carried a strong religious theme. This exhibition is evidence of that, featuring as it does a large number of paintings, drawings and sketches, all dedicated to the Scottish patron saint. Howson…

Goya - Monsters and Matadors

National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, until Sun

29 Jan 2007

ETCHING There is something unsettlingly contemporary about the etchings on display in this exhibition; they are vivid and raw. Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’ is the centrepiece to this modest collection, and rightly so. The important series, not published…

Living in the Modern World

City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sun 4 Mar

29 Jan 2007

PAINTING, FILM, PHOTOGRAPHY and INSTALLATION The spaces we inhabit and the buildings that surround us shape much of modern life as we know it. This is the basic premise for this densely packed exhibition, which spills out over two floors of the City…

Lorna Macintyre

Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Fri 23 Feb

29 Jan 2007

DRAWING, SCULPTURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY When the natural and unnatural are understood to be artificial concepts, the art object that takes this bleak state of affairs at its word is equally bleak. Lorna MacIntyre’s sculptures, photographs and drawings…

Simon Periton

The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 24 Feb

29 Jan 2007

WORK ON PAPER It is easy to find superficial anti-art and anti-aesthetic urges in Simon Periton’s spray painted collages and assemblages on show at The Modern Institute. The materials he takes his inspiration from appear to have been ripped from…

Julie Roberts

A woman's work

16 Jan 2007

After a century of feminism and post-feminisms, the word ‘woman’ has been constructed and deconstructed in such an enormous collection of philosophical and psychoanalytic tomes by some of the world’s greatest minds (Freud, de Beauvoir, Lacan, Kristeva…

Metal Bridge, The

Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, until Sat 20 Jan

16 Jan 2007

DRAWING, FILM, INSTALLATION. The Metal Bride - Group Show This small group show brings together the work of four artists - Steven Claydon (London), Thomas Helbing (Berlin) Craig Mulholland, and Duncan Marquiss (who both live in Glasgow). The…