Visual Art, Reviews

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Andrew Sunley Smith - Migratory Projects

Andrew Sunley Smith - Migratory Projects

10 Oct 2006

INSTALLATION, PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM Migratory Projects, by Australian artist Andrew Sunley Smith, loosely explores migration and survival, via records of journeys through Australia. Along with documentary photographs, items from the journeys are…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Anna Barriball

The Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 28 Oct

27 Oct 2006

PHOTOGRAPHY, SCULPTURE AND INSTALLATION ‘Untitled (Wallpaper)’, Barriball’s first drawing on display here, is a heavy-handed graphite rubbing on tracing paper recently taken from the Ingleby Gallery’s wallpapered wall. This intimate relationship with…

Lucy McKenzie

Goodbye Ms McKenzie

27 Oct 2006

It surely wont be long until Scotland sees a major retrospective of Lucy McKenzie’s career so far. The work chosen for her exhibition, Ten Years of Robotic Mayhem (and sublet) acts as an excellent selection of recent work from an oeuvre that continues…

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…

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…

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…