Blood 'n' Feathers
Until April 15; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh

I’m well-warned, at the opening night of Blood ‘n’ Feathers’ new exhibition, to expect some serious tongue in cheek behaviour. Lucy Stein and Jo Robertson have never made a secret of their irreverent attitudes, and just last year they sprung a not-quite-serious performance on the assembled audience of a serious symposium.

Imagine my surprise when Jo sits down in front of Lucy’s pretty mountainscape, and with an acoustic guitar and a sweet voice, she offers up three wistful songs of her own making. What’s more, they’re far closer to country music than to the raucous aggression of the artists’ hero, rock band wild child Courtney Love.

Robertson and Stein named themselves Blood ‘n’ Feathers from a line sung by Courtney Love. It’s Love’s kinderwhore aesthetic, accessorising fairy princess dresses with chainsaws, that offers the biggest clue to the artists’ post-punk approach. Look closer at Robertson’s candy-mountain backdrop, and you might recognise a mineral water logo surmounted by a direct reference to a famously explicit 19th century painting of a woman’s vagina.

Though the two artists met at Glasgow School of Art, and have collaborated since then, they are currently separated between London and Amsterdam. Nevertheless, they’ve made it to the shortlist of this year’s Beck’s Futures, which means contributing to three simultaneous shows in Glasgow, London and Bristol. Add that to this Collective show, and an upcoming show at London’s Jerwood Space, and you’ve got two very busy artists.

As well as a talent for singing, Blood ‘n’ Feathers can’t quite keep their love of painting in post-modern check. Angst-ridden German Expressionism meets angry 1980s pop in their gestural paintings and their cut up collages. Stein’s Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others is a bewitching ink-tentacled prison trapping doe-eyed females. Night Eyes drags a Dior make-up model into the post-apocalyptic horror of a slimy, hairy, cigarette butted wasteland.

Post-punk or not, there are some seriously lyrical passages of paint here, but Stein and Robertson never go too far without cutting back to the safety of post-modern irony. Get too close to Robertson’s bourgeois nightmare, Rescue Remedy, and you’ll spot a note saying “Oh no I farted!”. I have a feeling that Blood ‘n’ Feathers might be a little bit tongue in cheek about being tongue in cheek. Maybe, after all, it’s a double negative.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 26.03.06