Claire Barclay: Ideal Pursuits
Dundee Contemporary Arts until October 12

Magnetic North
Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen, until October 11

Suspend brain, engage senses, enter gallery. In this state you will make the most of Ideal Pursuits, a substantial offering from rising international star Claire Barclay, one of three artists currently representing Scotland at the Venice Biennale. Barclay’s installations may at first bamboozle, but as soon as intuition takes control, the feelings of pleasure and discomfort creep in, staying with you for the rest of the day like a half-remembered dream – or nightmare.

Barclay has used her customary range of materials – wood, leather, fabric, metal and wool – but added to the mix with jute, a nod to Dundee’s proud past, and terracotta, a new departure for the artist. Rather than installing pre-prepared pieces, she has created many of the works in situ, responding to the dynamics of the space, and interrupting them.

The physical tensions which Barclay has set up are almost too much to bear: tall spidery aluminium frames (like the aliens in the Mini advert) balance precariously on the floor and against the wall with no more than three or four spiky legs: they are not fixed in place, and what’s more, they wobble quietly as you step around them. Elsewhere, long planks of wood balance above the floor like ad-hoc see-saws, weighed down at either end with a ramshackle arrangement of hand-turned pots, and vertical planks strain in a tug of war with the wall, yanked out of place by ropes of macraméd jute. Everywhere there is balance, but only just. The potential energy is palpable, and like tantric sex, that bitter-sweet moment of anticipation is prolonged indefinitely.

Fetishism lurks in the shadowy areas between pleasure and pain, and in Barclay’s ambiguous use of leather and spikes. Five steel hoops encased in hand-sewn black leather look like harmless hoolahoops from a distance, but imply something much kinkier up close. The one drawing, of three pairs of hands occupied with cylindrical hoops, would keep Sigmund Freud entertained for a week, and a more innocent sense of forbidden desire is provoked by the suspended synthetic fabric which prevents access to one of DCA’s sunlit back-rooms.

Barclay is known for her provocative juxtapositioning of contrasting materials, setting the organic against the synthetic and the hand-crafted against the machine-made. No-where in the exhibition is this more eloquently expressed than the factory-made metal mesh stand (which looks vaguely like some sort of storage system) interconnected with hand-woven wicker-work; the two are similar in structure but culturally they are miles apart. As with all Barclay’s objects, their useful appearance belies a lack of functionality, a wry comment on the hobbyist role of crafts in society today.

Leaping now to new technology, Aberdeen’s Peacock Visual Arts has pulled off one of those things that should have been done a long time ago, and selected the best of electronic art from around Scotland’s degree shows in the first of what they hope will be an annual event. It is a relief to see that Magnetic North is ideas-led – the technology follows – and includes sound art, video, interactive work and even digital prints. The downside of cramming such a collection into a small space is the cacophony which results, not helped by the varying sound levels of the video programme. However, several of the works should not be missed, including Kate Jo’s intimate Whispering Wall and alarmingly eos, and the two videos which demonstrate Gregor Fletcher’s astounding talent for bringing sound and images together in total aesthetic harmony.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 07.09.03