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.

Foto: Modernity in Central Europe 1918-1945 (Group Show)

3 Jul 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 31 Aug The years between the two World Wars marked an incredibly innovative period in the development of Modernist photography. Today the photographic image is so ubiquitous that it barely merits comment…

Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008

3 Jul 2008

PHOTOGRAHY National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 21 Sep Any exhibition that begins with an Ashkenazi Jewish songwriter (Irving Berlin) and ends with a sloaney celebrity culture muse (Diana, Princess of Wales) is worth a peek. Following New…

Cathy Wilkes: Prices

17 Jul 2008

REVIEW INSTALLATION The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 6 Sep Cathy Wilkes is adept at creating compelling discomfort, making us look, and look again at queasy or disturbing phenomena in search of hidden meanings and narratives. In this…

Ellipsis

22 May 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM DCA, Dundee, until Sun 22 Jun That these works by three defining female artists form such an easy fit is testament to the expert touch of Lynne Cooke, curator of New York’s Dia Center for the Arts. In terms of style, intention…

Harry Smith Anthology Remixed

17 Jul 2008

REVIEW PAINTING, DRAWING, PHOTOGRAPHY, MUSIC CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 26 Jul Artist, filmmaker, musicologist: just a few of the labels attached to Harry Smith, the great American polymath of the 1950s. This exhibition celebrates the chain-smoking…

Glasgow School of Art MFA Degree Show (Group Show)

19 Jun 2008

MIXED MEDIA Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 22 Jun While locating good work by up-and-coming artists at an undergraduate show can feel like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack, at the Glasgow School of Art MFA show, as might be expected, the work…

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…

Haptic

3 Jul 2008

DESIGN The Lighthouse, Glasgow, until Mon 29 Sep High design and its pioneering spirit are taken on a Seuss-like tangent in this enjoyable, inventive and very silly exhibition. According to curator Kenya Hara’s notes ‘haptic’ means ‘relating or…

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show

19 Jun 2008

MIXED MEDIA Edinburgh College of Art, until Tue 24 Jun Information overload, autonomy, inquiry, provocation and dissent. Not themes as such, but rather loose strands in the willfully disparate expanse that makes up this class of 2008…

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…

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…

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…

Altered States of Paint

17 Jul 2008

REVIEW PAINTING (GROUP SHOW) DCA, Dundee, until Sun 7 Sep DCA’s excellent new exhibition manages to assail you before you even enter the gallery, thanks to Rabiya Choudhry’s vibrant wall painting that presents the show’s title across the blade…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Hitlist: Festival Art

1 Aug 2007

The best exhibitions in the Edinburgh Festival

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…

Au Fil D’Ecosse

17 Jul 2008

REVIEW PAINTING, PHOTOGRAPHY, INSTALLATION Institut Français, Edinburgh, until Fri 29 Aug This collaboration between artist Cyril Barrand and poet John Hudson leaves no thread untied, no thematic ambiguity unresolved, with the result that our…

Karin Christiansen and Lys Hansen: The Other Side – A Dialogue

17 Jul 2008

REVIEW PAINTING & SCULPTURE Collins Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 16 Aug (closed Fri 18–Mon 21 Jul) Lou Reed had never been to Berlin before he wrote his doomed rock opera named after the then divided city. If he had, it might have been even…

Found

3 Jul 2008

ART/MUSIC INSTALLATION Dialogues of Wind and Bamboo, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Sat 21 Jun It was the all-you-can-eat buffet of line-ups. There were robots playing bamboo instruments, dancing in the sculpture garden, tai chi and the chance to…

Louise Bourgeois: Nature Study

5 Jun 2008

PAINTING, SCULPTURE Inverleith House, Edinburgh, until Sun 6 Jul It’s a weekday lunchtime in spring and the Royal Botanic Garden is teeming with new life. Mothers push buggies, primary school children dig into the earth and the plants are a riot of…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Mladen Stilinovi?: On Money, Zeroes, etc

3 Jul 2008

MIXED MEDIA CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 19 Jul According to the Croatian artist Mladen Stilinovic, there is no art without laziness. A series of photographs entitled ‘Artist at Work’ shows his theory in action: Stilinovic lying in bed, looking melancholy…

Catherine Yass: High Wire

22 May 2008

FILM AND PHOTOGRAPHY INSTALLATION CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 24 May In July 2007 French high wire artist Didier Pasquette attempted to walk between three of Glasgow’s Red Road high rise tower blocks. The event turned out to be somewhat anti-climatic with…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Douglas Gordon

The dark arts

22 Nov 2006

Just days before Halloween, the exterior lights of the Royal Scottish Academy were switched from white to red, casting a warning beacon to the city that something dramatic and uneasy was afoot. Five huge black posters were unfurled over the façade…

Stephen Murray and Kate Orton - New Work Scotland Project

The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 4 Nov

28 Sep 2006

SULPTURE, DRAWING AND INSTALLATION The work of Stephen Murray and Kate Orton shares some startling similarities. Both work in a variety of media - sculpture, drawing and mixed media constructions. Both, too, are interested in postive and negative…

Michael Stumpf: Glöckchen Whiplash

19 Jun 2008

MIXED MEDIA SCULTURAL INSTALLATION Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, until Sat 5 Jul There are two identical wall paintings, apparently of sunsets, in Michael Stumpf’s new exhibition. Why two sunsets, and no sunrise? Part of the strange mix of disparate…

Lucy Skaer

5 Jun 2008

DRAWING, SCULPTURE & FILM Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until Wed 9 Jul Looking at Skaer’s black drawings is like watching someone trapped under a thick sheet of ice. Admittedly, the likelihood of ever having witnessed such a death is rare, but the…

Iain Hetherington: Diversified Cultural Workers

5 Jun 2008

PAINTING Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 28 Jun Using a combination of abstract and realist painting techniques, Iain Hetherington’s new exhibition presents an intriguing twist on the idea of the painted portrait. These new works build on themes…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

David Shrigley

DCA, Dundee, until Sun 21 Jan 2007

20 Dec 2006

DRAWING, SCULPTURE AND VIDEO David Shrigley’s drawings are synonymous. He is famous for absurdities with a helping of schoolboy humour. But it is his sculptures that are most memorable in this mini-retrospective. Cast aside the ‘but is it art?…

Northern City - Between Light and Dark

Light after the Enlightenment

6 Dec 2006

It’s easy to locate the source of the schizophrenic nature of Edinburgh - a city with a valley and a scarring train line running right through its heart. This rocky gully acts as a metaphorical and geographical boundary, a symbolic line barring the city…

Callum Innes - From Memory

Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 19 Nov

11 Nov 2006

PAINTING Let’s just get it out the way quickly - there are some bad paintings in this mini-retrospective of Edinburgh-based Callum Innes at the Fruitmarket Gallery. Well, two at a push. This exhibition continues to receive such high praise (he’s both…

Graham Fagen

Doggerfisher Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 9 Dec 2

11 Nov 2006

PRINTMAKING, PHOTOGRAPHY, INSTALLATION Graham Fagen has painted the walls in the main gallery black, immediately setting an ethereal, theatrical tone to this dimly lit exhibition, entitled ‘Closer’. Three silkscreen prints, simplistic white linear…

Winston Roeth

Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, until Fri 22 Dec

11 Nov 2006

PAINTING The most powerful work in this show is a piece entitled ‘Edinburgh Slate Assembly’, which consists of seven 50cm x 30cm slates, each painted in a different shade of dense tempera - there are two blues, two purples, a yellow, a pink and a…

Keith Farquhar - Drunken Maria

Keith Farquhar - Drunken Maria (14 Units)

27 Oct 2006

SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION Pat Fisher, the curator at the Talbot Rice Gallery, has managed to squeeze even more space for the best of contemporary art out of the two galleries and ornate passageway that are at her disposal. This month Edinburgh-based…

GSA Annual Staff Show - Christine Borland, Thomas Joshua Cooper and Peter McCaughy

GSA Annual Staff Show - Christine Borland, Thomas

12 Oct 2006

PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO AND INSTALLATION This slick little show continues the annual ‘outing’ of the talents of GSA staff members. The exhibition is pared down this year, which means that there is space to consider the objects, enough room to look for…

Word Order: Concrete Poetry and its Influence

The Changing Room, Stirling, until Sat 21 Oct

28 Sep 2006

SCULPTURE, INSTALLATION AND PRINT Although the main space is minimal, the Scottish poet Alec Finlay’s playful wall works adds gusto to Stirling’s Changing Room. Welcoming us to the exhibition is ‘Loop’ (2006), cut out letters spelling the title four…

Nicky Bird: Beneath the Surface/Hidden Place

3 Jul 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 20 Jul For a project which corrals so many amateur photographers and their family photos to share co-creative billing with the artist, its unifying theme is acutely realised. This show is about…

Janice McNab

22 May 2008

PAINTING Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, until Sat 12 Jul In recent years the work of Aberfeldy-born, Amsterdam-based painter Janice McNab has lent itself towards a series she calls her ‘Chocolate Box Paintings’. While that term has developed from…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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…