Visual art and Reviews

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…

Peter Blake: Venice

Poptabulous exhibition of screenprints inspired by La Dominante

21 Jul 2009

When Art went POP!, Peter Blake defined a very British view of how the 60s swung. Collaging trash iconography with pop star royalty, all involved were bestowed with mutually acquired cult credibility. Forty-odd years on from Sergeant Pepper, the…

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…

Chicks on Speed: Don’t Art, Fashion, Music

16 Jun 2010

‘CREATE UNDER ALL DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES’ is one of the slogans on the large-scale banners that adorn the walls of globe-spanning riot grrrl art provocateurs Chicks on Speed’s first major UK solo show. A large-scale projection of ‘Fashion Archive’, a…

Pádraig Timoney – Shepard Tone

Deceptive and frustrating mixed media show with no clear theme

14 Mar 2012

Shepard Tone offers an eclectic mix of painting, photography and mixed media wall-based work, seemingly with little in common. The title describes an auditory illusion of continually descending or ascending pitch. As expected, the exhibition is…

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…

Jo Spence: Self Portraits

19 Jun 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Sun 16 Nov Working class artist, photographer, Marxist, feminist, teacher and publisher Jo Spence was an extraordinary talent. Issue-based but always accessible, her work can be seen as the progenitor…

David Mach: Precious Light

Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition of biblical proportions by Fife-born artist

5 Aug 2011

Without doubt, Methil-born artist David Mach’s work ‘Golgotha’ will stand out as the defining image from the artistic strand of this year’s Edinburgh Festival. Three enormous figures of threaded steel nailed to metallic crosses, which take up the entire…

Jimmie Durham: Universal Miniature Golf (The Promised Land)

4 May 2010

American sculptor, Jimmie Durham, is concerned with the politics of materials and deliberately works in a craft-like way at a time when it is seen as unsophisticated, folky and crude to make things by hand. He responds to his location by collecting raw…

Artist Rooms: Joseph Beuys

15 Apr 2010

This exhibition of work by postwar German artist Joseph Beuys features a selection from the ‘Braunkreuz’ series: drawings, the legendary fat chair, and his objects in vitrines. Beuys’ signatory mediums of felt, fat and copper, chosen for their…

Artist Rooms

2 Apr 2009

GROUP SHOW One of two flagship group shows to stem from Anthony d’Offay’s gift to the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate last year (the other is at Tate Modern), Artist Rooms is bright and inspiring and bulges with defining work from some of the…

Hitlist - Visual Art

11 Dec 2008

● Charles Avery, The Island: An Introduction A visually arresting, provocative and playful introduction to Avery’s ongoing project, charting the creatures, topology and cosmology of an imaginary island. Highly recommended. See review, page 104. Scottish…

Gerhard Richter: Paintings from Private Collections

27 Nov 2008

PAINTING The literature accompanying this show sets the bar high: ‘One of the greatest and most influential European artists of the last 50 years’. Whoever chose those words wasn’t wrong. This first retrospective in the UK for 20 years of Gerhard…

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…

Hidden City

Edinburgh Printmakers members’ show a mixed bag

9 Dec 2011

In compiling their latest, largest annual members’ show, Edinburgh Printmakers have imposed an unwitting watermark of quality with their decision to give it a theme. ‘Edinburgh Uncovered’ is the subtitle, and the collection claims to offer ‘an intimate…

John Bellany’s: A Celtic Voyage

Cramped but impressive selection of works by Scottish artist

24 Aug 2009

Scottish painter John Bellany’s East Coast hometown of Port Seton, a small seafaring community where fishing was a way of life and Calvinism blew fear through the streets, informs the artist’s oeuvre. Fish, gannets, swans, playing cards and boats…

Milestone

Provocative exhibition accompanying a live stone-carving project

6 Aug 2009

Entering the quad of the Edinburgh College of Art feels a bit like discovering yet another ill-placed tram construction site. The air is full of the drone of power tools, and dust clouds settle in your hair and mouth. Milestone is an unconventional…

Karla Black - Material world

5 Feb 2009

REVIEW SCULPTURE The perfect storm of grease, dust and cotton wool towelled onto the floor and hanging from ceiling tiles that forms the bulk of Karla Black’s show is something of an assault to eyes not used to squalor. The natural urge is to tidy…

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…

Scott Myles: This Production

Dundee artist and former skater reclaims DCA building’s interior

23 May 2012

It makes sense that the site of DCA used to be Scott Myles’ playground. Back then he was a skater boy and it was a bricks-and-mortar garage re-imagined as the sort of makeshift skate-park for local heroes and future high-flyers, which, under the…

Edvard Munch: Graphic Works from the Gunderson Collection

Extended introduction to troubled Norwegian painter

23 May 2012

Perhaps the greatest surprise for casual viewers of this high-profile new exhibition from the Scottish National Galleries is the discovery that Norwegian painter Edvard Munch had a whole catalogue of work besides ‘The Scream’. One of the most famous…

Paul Thek: If you don’t like this book you don’t like me

Candid close-up of Brooklyn-born painter and sculptor

23 May 2012

‘I will now call to mind our past foulness and the carnal corruptions of my soul’ goes one missive culled from the now opened pages of almost a hundred notebooks left behind by Brooklyn-born painter and sculptor Thek, which came to light following his…

What Presence! – The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos

Stunning exhibition of post-punk music photography

19 Dec 2011

Harry Papadopoulos is the great unsung documenter of post-punk, who, between 1978 and 1984, captured a crucial era in pop history in all its geeky glory. Having started out taking snaps for Bobby Bluebell’s fanzine, The Ten Commandments, and orbiting…

The Writing On Your Wall

Rob Tufnell-curated group show chronicling the history of radical print

28 Oct 2011

When Jeremy Deller put Rupert Murdoch’s walnut face on a sky-blue ‘Vote Conservative’ poster to raise funds for the Labour Party, it looked like satire. Given the ongoing phone-hacking saga, it now feels like prophecy. The ‘Murdoch Doesn’t Give A XXX…

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields and Photogenic Drawings

Breathtaking exploration of both photography and science

25 Aug 2011

To say that Sugimoto's contribution to the Edinburgh International Festival is striking would be an understatement. This is the first time these works have been displayed in Europe. The Japanese photography pioneer’s huge analogue 'Lightning Fields…