Girlpower & Boyhood
Until September 30; Talbot Rice Gallery

Last year at this time Paula Rego’s brooding prints crammed the walls of Edinburgh University’s Talbot Rice Gallery. Characters from children’s fairytales lurked in a dusky netherworld, where innocence had little time left to live. Earlier in the year, the work of Swiss-born Louise Schmidt had filled the gallery with dream-like drawings and paintings, their watery streams of consciousness littered with feminine flotsam and jetsam.

This summer the gallery returns to that world of fantasy, where dreams hover on the verge of nightmare, childish innocence loses its rosy sheen, and buried female desires are excavated. In a collaboration with the Kunsthallen Brandts in Denmark, the Talbot Rice has got together an unusual mix of international painters for whom day dreaming is a full-time job.

Although there are some well-known inclusions, such as surrealist veteran Louise Bourgeois and her New York contemporary Ida Applebroog, the show is not by any means a list of the usual suspects. A strong showing of young Danish painters helps to keep things unpredictable, along with a handful each of American and British artists, and a few miscellaneous Europeans.

Though the show dips its toe into the realm of boyhood, that aspect is pale and wan compared with the potency of the female paintings. In fact, one of the boys, Saatchi favourite Hernan Bas, negates the reality of his own gender, preferring to savour the sexually ambiguous figures of merman and centaur.

But there’s nothing quite like the power and confusion of a pubescent girl’s imagination. That’s the emotional driving force in many of the works in the show, whether it’s opened up for all to see, or bubbling under a tightly closed lid. Julie Roberts’ two Sleeping Beauties, dreaming on their pillows, are inscrutable. The storybook ribbons in their hair belie the grown-up seriousness on their sleeping faces. We don’t have access to their dreams, but we can be sure they don’t match the little-girl outfits.

Italian painter Carolina Raquel Antich’s images of children are equally poker-faced, to the point of sadness. Whether standing at the sea’s edge or sitting on an ostrich, these perfectly-groomed youngsters appear acutely aware of their existential condition despite their tender years. Still, they play their roles perfectly, taking their place in the world, and in the harmonious interplay of colours on canvas.

Other works allow the contents of girlish imaginations to spill out all over the canvas. The lush drawings of Danish artist, Julie Nord, take the rural idyll of fairy tale illustrations and extend them to the brink of horror. The little girl’s expression is louche, the animals around her unhappy, and skulls and eyes lurk in the shadows of the forest.

Dutch artist Vanessa Phaff takes things one step further; the little girl in her paintings doesn’t look at all worldly-wise, but she does look evil. The naïve character, painted in bold comic-book style, seems to dream of dictatorship. Whether she understands what she is doing is unclear, as she absorbs the influences of the adult world around her.

Sandra Scolnik’s paintings take the nightmare into the adult realm. House III is a Boschean scene of horror, in which the artist’s self-portrait is multiplied into a cast of thousands. A strict hierarchy governs this family of Scolniks in their grand country house, leading to uncomfortable scenes of slavery and domination, while upholstered chairs and designer handbags litter the lawn.

There are a lot of themes packed into this show under a broad banner, but they really do hang together. The subject matter of dreams and fantasies draws numerous strands together in cornucopias of colour and imagination. If you thought art had lost its capacity to dream, think again.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 03.09.06