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Five Shows of 2004
1
Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
Good art tends to make an impact on you right away. Really good art
continues to nibble at the edges of your consciousness long after
youve left the gallery. Louise Bourgeois achieved both this
year, piercing decades-old anguish with needle, and ensnaring it with
thread.
The New-York based artist, now 92, reached back to her roots in Surrealist
Paris to bring us high-pitched hysteria in lace, nylon, and rusty
old metal. The Fruitmarket resounded with inaudible screams, soft
female figures looking far from comfortable on hooks, in cages, and
stitched out of shape.
Stitches in Time was the first show organised by Fruitmarket director
Fiona Bradley since her arrival from Londons Hayward Gallery.
Less than a year later, she has lifted the Spirit of Scotland art
award.
No wonder. Out of all the exhibitions Ive ever seen, this one
cut the deepest. It carved its way, without invitation, into my darkest
insides, and it washed them out, as if with bleach. Images of dangling
dolls, their threads hanging, will never fade. It was hard to deal
with it on a purely intellectual level the art, in its rawest
state, simply got the better of me.
2 Steven Campbell: Jean-Pierre Léaud
Glasgow Print Studio
Since his early dash to fame as one of the New Glasgow Boys
of the 1980s, Steven Campbell has come a long way. The prolific Glasgow
artist frightened the art world in 2002 with a bleak exhibition full
of blood and murder. But this year he pulled out a series of 22 new
canvasses which while still full of gruesome happenings
returned to the playful absurdity which Campbell does best.
A finely-tuned cast of characters, from Bela Lugosi to Rosslyn Chapels
Green Man, played out bizarre scenes from Campbells fecund imagination.
Siamese Boxing Triplets shared the athletic field with
those gunned-down unfortunates whod entered the Tarantino
Dash.
There was some twisted logic in there somewhere, and Campbells
ever-increasing visual lexicon was a complex code just waiting to
be broken. Like the mysteries of Rosslyn Chapel, or of the world itself,
the answers all seemed to be there, tied up in a teeming jumble of
conundrums.
3 Susan
Hiller: Recall
Baltic, Gateshead
Baltic hosted 30 years of work from American-born artist Susan Hiller
this summer, using the vast old flour mill to great effect. In the
dark basement lurked Punch and Judy as they have never been seen before,
menacing, sinister, terrifying. Up the stairs you could pick your
way through an enchanted forest of voices, from hundreds of dangling
speakers. On the light-soaked top floor, in a brand new installation,
Hiller filled the room with stories of near-death experiences, the
sound triggered by your own movement through the space.
While the former anthropologist explored near-death-experiences, UFOs,
group dreams and auras, her real target was the collective human psyche.
These phenomena are, in many ways, of our own making. Hiller plays
the dream-catcher, trawling our collective unconscious, projecting
our dreams and desires back to us in the cold light of day. And the
cold light of Gateshead proved to be an ideal place to do it.
4
The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
The National Gallery of Scotland was awash with champagne this summer,
celebrating the dual pleasures of a Titian exhibition and a brand
new underground link. The Weston Link, with its state-of-the-art facilities,
allowed the gallery to raise its game, and The Age of Titian was a
sign of things to come.
The National Gallerys own Titian paintings were the stars of
the show, but they were joined by hidden gems by the Venetian master
and his contemporaries, discovered in Scotlands stately homes
and hitherto unknown to scholars.
Bright pastel colours leapt off the walls. Fleshy nudes shimmered
in the light. Chunky brushstrokes and luminous glazes were a reminder
that the High Renaissance was not only about the virtuoso precision
of Rome, but also about the freedom and exuberance of Venice.
5
Mike Nelson: Pumpkin Palace
Collective Gallery off-site, Edinburgh
The more adventurous festival-goers among you might have worked up
the courage this summer to step onto Mike Nelsons bus. Parked
behind wooden hoardings on Edinburghs Market Street, it was
wrapped in Arabic newspapers, emblazoned with a red crescent, and
looked like it had quite literally been through the
wars.
Inside, a creepy mix of underground paraphernalia witchcraft
material, hash pipes, and a Hamas recruitment video were stashed
away in grimy nooks and crannies. There were rough and ready sleeping
berths in every available space, and it felt like a bizarre concoction
of dodgy characters had just popped out and would be back at any minute.
The atmosphere was thick. The incongruous mix of belief-systems was
dizzying. Stepping back into Market Street, you really felt like you
had been somewhere far away, and come back all worldly-wise.
Catrìona
Black, Sunday Herald 26.12.04