Creative Futures
Until October 16; Crawford Arts Centre, St Andrews

I can’t decide whether to be happy or sad about Ailsa Lochhead’s work. The young artist, just out of Glasgow School of Art, has brought the musty world of village halls and couthy caravans into the gallery. She has arranged music and storytelling sessions, piping the results through speakers and displaying photographs of the sessions on the gallery wall.

I’m happy because it’s pretty authentic – take it from one who knows. Yours truly will always be most at home playing fiddle in a smoke-stained pub/hall/caravan in the wee small hours. It’s a world where everybody’s welcome, and so is every contribution.

That this world is introduced to the art world makes me happy. But the fact that it has to be introduced at all makes me sad. Is it really such a foreign concept? The problem is compounded by the tartan tat which Lochhead has added to her caravan’s interior, giving an unexpected two fingers to the world she’s lovingly recreated.

Lochhead is one of four artists selected from this year’s degree shows for the Crawford Arts Centre. They were chosen by four well-established Scottish artists, whose work is also on display in the exhibition. Lochhead was the choice of Will Maclean, whose antique albums of fishing gear show a similar concern for Scotland’s unsung traditional cultures.

This exhibition’s framework – inviting artists to scour degree shows for new talent – is an excellent one, and should be a regular fixture. While there are obvious merits in the gallery’s decision to show all eight artists on an equal basis, the show does lack the focus of the accompanying leaflet, failing to make clear who chose whom, and why.

Elizabeth Ogilvie chose Trevor Gordon from Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee, for his gorgeously repulsive metalwork. Glass cabinets display the pewter objects in a sumptuous jumble of goods, lingering somewhere between the worlds of alchemy, cannibalism, and antique jewellery. The handles on a set of cutlery might be fish-bones, they might be human spines. A napkin ring looks uncannily like a pelvic bone. These things are rich: in beauty and horror combined.

Dundee based Dalziel + Scullion have chosen Lisa Gillanders from Grays School of Art, and the connection between the two is readily apparent. Dalziel + Scullion’s recent project, Breathtaking, is shown here, faring better in the gallery context than in its original billboard format.

Like Dalziel + Scullion’s work, Gillanders’ paintings are enigmatic, suggesting stories both human and geological compressed into a single instant. In Drive-by, four vehicles circle a central heap of boulders. They weave into a little copse, and out into the bareness of unpainted plywood.

In The Phone Call, events in the foreground, middleground and background, all streaked through with blood red paint, are connected only by a telegraph wire. As in Drive-By, places and people are separate from each other, blank and helpless. Each painting, despite physical connections like roads and telephones, is a frightening mystery of isolation.

Nathan Coley has chosen Cai Conduct from Edinburgh College of Art. A banal video projection of woodland, close up, is not all it seems. A wall text tells you of the nearby sign which says “MOD Property. Danger of Sudden Illumination”, and true enough, the scene lights up regularly to the sound of approaching aircraft, and then dims again.

This work is what you make of it. If you are, like Coley, fascinated with the complex values accrued by certain places, then you’ll find plenty to consider here. It’s a difficult work to consider in isolation, but Conduct has a lifetime to put that right.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 18.09.05