notes from the drifting spaces

(article continued from previous post)

A vaguely familiar and catchy game type tune pulled me into an installation piece, ‘THE PURGE’, a joint work by three artists Chitra Sangtani, Lewis Prosser and Martha Simms. The tune and glittering colours welcome me to enter into the game world of The Purge, with an unsettling laughing audience on the screen behind me as I look to the earth spinning on the other two screens, to be offered on it the chance to win – to play and come out of this with nothing, if I can make it out of here at all I wonder. It is a sci-fi world where the gentle arts order has been vaporized. Some of the ‘Fun Trivia’ questions catch my attention –

‘With emphasis on the word ‘what’, what is totality?… Describe the sensation of total loss in 3 accurate words… With regards to the previous rounds, are you feeling lucky?’

 

‘The Purge’ film stills

 

Copyright the artists Chitra Sangtani, Lewis Prosser and Martha Simms

I like this piece, it symbolizes some feeling the graduates have about their situation in the art world and society and it marks a turning point perhaps in the fine art degree shows generally, which couldn’t have been ‘achieved’ in the Mackintosh building – here there is a more raw freedom to create without fear of the history and burden of expectations that came with the show. George Garthwaite’s work are wacky poetic odes to the dark heaviness that can seem to haunt the soul, the bleakness (of being a a young fine artist in the Tontine?). In his blog the artist says he is ‘interested in a world ridden with images and cartoons.’ The warm coloured textured paintings signed GG are at first glance comic strip satires of the seemingly everyday mundane transformed into peculiar and frivolous situations, but there lurks the impression of more depth, probing the soul… Moving away from everyday reality much like The Purge, a sense of upbeat animation elevating the dispirited or woebegone from the no-win.

Painting by GG (George Garthwaite), copyright the artist

There is also the feeling that this is not some kind of truly glorious stage or end point as was the feeling in the past, but a stage where the guidelines have been reset by the students. The idea now for students to go on to further education also frees up this stage point as more fluid and somewhat sets up the undergrad show as at odds with the new art establishment. So no matter how manic or non picturesque some of the degree works have become, let it be, GSA is serving the students well here with this working environment, although it has its obvious drawbacks too as an exhibition space, but these obstacles are surmountable and challenging in a good way. So out of something bleak, destruction has forced a new setup, which along with a changing mood amongst young artists, has encouraged a new wave of beatnik creativity.

 

Artwork by George Garthwaite, copyright the artist

 

‘Stage on TV’ and ‘Dead Horse’ by Jessie Whiteley, copyright the artist

I pass more corners, through more white walled nooks and more doors that open the wrong way. Must have just come the wrong way. A dead horse or some other animal perhaps sleeping and composed of plaster is almost stumbled across, it brings me closer to the floor at least, and also helps me take in some favorable examples of painting that are adjacent, with confident colours and brush marks. The installed sculpture and paintings here by Jessie Whitely are fun in an expansive way, and continue the non solemn mood of the show. They lift the spirits, and are imaginative and dreamlike, while technically very competent and attracting the viewer with the varied surfaces and textures. The artist says of the work:

‘Painting and drawing’s direct and sensitive qualities lead my work and allow me to work with ideas from chance and the subconscious… I use fantasy as a way of thinking about reality from day-to-day life and to explore the reality of the imagination, from working with it visually and manually. I work from an emotive, personal response to the theatrical, fantastical and humorous settings of modern life and the myth and metaphor of an Internet generation.’

‘Acid Rain’ by Jessie Whiteley, oil on canvas on board (50x100x240cm), copyright the artist

As I went down the stairs of the Tontine, I realize this has been a captivating undergraduate show, with ups and downs I guess, but good sometimes not to have too much well presented consistency in the fine art context. The building is a bit mad and bad an environment – an ideal change. A bit tired out, I headed back up through the city centre on foot via the art stores on Queen Street, uphill towards the canal and the M8, to the Glue Factory for the Maters of Fine Art Degree Show. Always good to see what those masters of fine art are doing over there, it is a fantastic exhibition space.

The entry to the space was welcoming and I am given a floor plan. There are some experiments with potential, and early on the installation and video work by Monica Foote captivates, ‘This is Where the Magic Happens’. This piece has stage set like shapes on the left and right that fragment and interrupt the video projection – these frame a space where the artist made a performance piece. Nearby I am stopped by Morwenna Kearseley’s two channel video installation ‘To Speak is to Starve’ with the large projections facing each other. As I stand in between the projections I am unable to see both at once. Looking from point to point I see fast moving close-ups of a hand turning and tapping to create rhythm. Visual information is edited to a minimum, allowing the sound of voices and the notion of voices to accumulate and move your perceptions. I walk around the show. Although presented adequately enough, some of the works this year are missing something integral, though at first I think maybe this is just the feeling after coming from the undergrad.

Some of the video pieces are becoming more engaging and sophisticated. Using video projection to shine angular forms of light through acetate with a seamless array of other materials, Heather Lander creates the standout highlight of this show – ‘Materials and Duration (1 and 2)’ (1 – Diacel acetate, projector, steel, video edit of light sculpture, wood, 17 min video loop; 2 – 4 way video splitter, LED monitor, perspex, steel, video edit of light sculpture, wood, 12 min loop). Two artworks charge the dark industrial space with hologram like intensity, a smaller structure with four contained moving images that deftly reflect up onto perspex, and the large piece which opens out around the whole space so that both pieces work together. The larger projection of the forms reflect off and through the transparent plastic, which are hanging together in aligned layers, and jettison the chromatic light reflections out onto the surrounding walls of the darkened room and large metal door surfaces at the furthest end of the space.

Heather Lander, ‘Materials and Duration (1)’, photograph by Jack Wrigley

Heather Lander, Installation view of ‘Materials and Duration (1 and 2)’, photograph by Jack Wrigley

The piece mesmerizes and is a beautiful experience to gaze at and be part of in the space. Standing, glimpsing the ever changing light here and there, near and far, as it meanders and curves, metamorphosing from combined 3D looking geometric forms to organic flows of colour, fusing in and out of focus. There is a harmonic calm here in this piece, yet strength. The artist gives an insight into the thinking and application of her work:

‘Our perception of reality, and how phenomena such as illusions and technology can alter this, has been the key component to my work this past year. How we recognise and keep hold of reality in a world that is working towards complete virtual immersion is the question my work is currently investigating.

The imagery being projected in the two pieces in the degree show use edited video I took of a perspex sculpture I made that I projected moving image onto. This sculpture was the first thing I made while on the course and it has been my resource material for the sculptural/video installations.’

From being immersed in the chaotic creative whirlpool of the Tontine earlier in the day, this momentary and yet highly sophisticated piece has made it well worth coming to the MFA exhibition. Altogether the GSA Degree Shows this year have been energizing, and with the three distinct exhibition environments each has been unique.

Methodically I began the GSA Degree Show journey. Working my way through the gleaming open spaces of the Steven Holl designed Reid Building, an interior shimmering in neutrality and sinuos equilibrium, taking in the impressive efforts of the students in the various design disciplines. Spotless presentation in a perfect exhibition environment, no place for too much messy artfulness – an appropriate haven for the marketing of the school, indeed an additional key asset to the Mackintosh building. Communication Design was particularly strong this year.

With larger scale works and quirky comical pieces testing the boundaries of the what the Communication Design department’s designers conceive of as art or design, and continuing to plug any gaps in between. Calum Macleod’s large collagraph print holds the space and combines a dynamic and outwardly simple composition with modulating colours and a repeated, almost biotic or cellular texture that draws the eye around the curve. I like the confidence in the paper’s unworked negative spaces. After this masterclass in design at the Reid I headed down through the Merchant City to see the Fine Art Degree Show at the Tontine East Building, unsure what to expect from the new space with the Mackintosh building being out of action due to the ongoing process of fire damage restoration.

At Glasgow Cross the narrow entrance to the Tontine was fronted by friendly looking red and black suited bouncers, an unlikely but curious start. Up the stairs of this traditional early 1900’s Grade B listed office building the show began on the third floor, past some padlocked space below, through some double doors and an old reception area. Next into a wider room nevertheless packed with walls and things, plastic, soil, fragments of artwork, monitors, skirmishes in creativity versus architecture – what exactly happened here?

Wondering around a corner and old kitchen, drawn into a darkened series of rooms and the noise of some overly loud video works, then into rooms where the graduating students had built more rooms, leaving curious gaps with various detritus around. Walking further, and looking ever hopefully for signs to guide me through more doors, some with fascinating tiny handles on one side and full height ones on the other, like being pulled into someone else’s fairytale or nightmare, the show continued. However I started to adjust to the situation, the Tontine fine art world, where the realm of the fabulous Mackintosh campus and its brilliance and harmony was far enough away and out of mind. The display began to organise and space out, more light filtering in through the large windows looking onto the lanes and old and new Glasgow around the historic junction of the cross. There was the sense I was moving somewhere, from one work to the next, albeit in circles.

One artist I liked early on was Georgia Mackie, whose two large video works were like numerous flickering strips of vertical film, each subtly but quickly changing colour and with a mysterious tonality. ‘Seasons 1 to 4’ (HD video, 14:20 min, 2015) is more compressed with verticals, each a moving image in itself, but too narrow to see any subject – the digital flowing abstraction transitions from warmer reds and oranges to cooler purples and blues. The scale of the projection here being about two metres across. The pieces are silent which works with the imagery and which is also a relief from the combination of the sound ricochets of other pieces nearby. In ‘Seasons 5’ (HD video, 4:36 min, 2015) the complexity is less, the strips being thicker and so allowing the changing areas of light to emerge and have a more impact against the blacks and dark blues. These combine to make a mature video installation.

Georgia Mackie’s work on vimeo

A performance artist-musician with drums connected to his limbs awoke from a deep slumber in his degree show pod and subsequently furtively stalked me for a while. I awkwardly stopped and let him pass by without a word, his drums clanging as he went by, adding to the intermingling sound waves of different works, or was it the building itself speaking? After the Reid Building the students’ works looked sometimes bizarre, sometimes deliberately very poor quality in execution, yet they were not invisible but were communicating, about all sorts of issues, ideas, preferences. There was a lot of noise going on, into the varied jumble of peoples’ heads, but it was exciting – maybe not a roller coaster ride, more like being pulled through a series of washing machines…

(part two of review continued in next post)