Pamela So: The Collector’s Garden
Crawford Arts Centre, St Andrews
13 January – 5 March

The entrance to Pamela So’s exhibition at the Crawford Arts Centre boasts the least macho homage to minimalism that it’s possible to imagine.

Fifteen squares of plastic grass sit in a neat grid on the floor. As well as strictly geometrical arrangements of plastic flowers, the squares contain rogue elements: exotic paper flowers on tall wire stalks, each a unique product of the artist’s workshops last year in Manchester, combined with contributions from the exhibition’s visitors.

It was in the unlikely setting of Hill of Tarvit, a stately home near Cupar, that the Chinese-Scottish artist found the inspiration for her flowers. The paper templates are derived directly from the patterns on plates and cups in the mansion house, whose strong collection of Chinese porcelain is testament to Britain’s historic tea-trade with China.

While So has previously explored the opium-filled underbelly of that tea-trade, this work moves into less toxic realms of botany. Large photographs show paper flowers nestling surreptitiously amongst weeds in an old greenhouse, and in shrubs at Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens. Others, taken by her father, show So’s family in their Chinese garden (now a public park) and inserted like ghosts on the stairs at Hill of Tarvit.

A series of slides, both digital and actual, catalogue Chinese plants now naturalised in Western Europe. The metaphor is clear, that people, like flowers, have been transplanted from China to Scotland, but despite So’s research, the idea remains too under-developed to sustain interest.

This could be explained by the number of projects in which So has recently played a part. She has shown flair and ingenuity in her past work, and the research from this year’s residency in St Andrews will no doubt prove bountiful in time to come. So far though, it’s best described as work in progress.

Catrìona Black, a-n magazine, March 2006