Michael Wilkinson
Until February 18; The Modern Institute

The preview card for Michael Wilkinson’s latest show is emblazoned with a beer-swilling monkey. That won’t come as a great surprise to those who’ve seen his mirror pieces over the last year, incorporating vintage posters of chimps dressed as humans. But somewhere between inviting the guests and installing the exhibition, the monkeys have made a bid for escape; there’s not a single furry mammal to be seen.

Wilkinson’s old love for vintage album covers has got the better of him. He became known five years ago for stacking album-shaped boards against gallery walls, and for paring down their cover design to the bare essentials. In this way he plans to document every bit of vinyl in his own collection. The results, clean and bright in primary colours, tread a fine line between early 20th century abstract sculpture, and late 20th century geekishness.

This show devotes four works of art to one record in particular: Pink Floyd’s cult concept album, The Wall. The album, along with the film of the same name, was a miserable account of mental breakdown in the face of tyrannical oppression. All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Wilkinson has taken Gerald Scarfe’s sleeve design and removed the monstrous cast of characters from between the bricks. A free-standing wooden wall, like some painted theatre prop, is missing just one little escapee brick. A single crack runs through a print of a dry-stane dike, making the whole thing a wee bit Scottish.

Scarfe’s brick design reappears in a long, screenprinted mirror, but where the gargoylish caricatures were bursting out of the original, Wilkinson has printed uninterrupted blue skies. So where have the tyrants gone?
Don’t ask me. Maybe the same place as the monkeys.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 23.01.05