Press

33Selected Essays and Reviews

Edinburgh Annuale

Aurora, The Embassy, Total Kunst, Magnifitat and Wuthering Heights

Neil Mulholland

Flash Art

October 2004

"The Edinburgh Festival is so jam packed that it would take years to attend all the proceedings. Given this cultural glut, why launch an Annuale in August? The Festival, consisting of a few insipid blockbusters and a spattering of Sunday painters, is not exactly legendary for pioneering visual arts programming. Asphyxiated by the lucrative stand-up market, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is no 'alternative'. In a globalised corporate culture crazy for investment-led international festivals,, the onus is on local artists to defend the citadels of community culture. Edinburgh artist-led gallery The Embassy has corralled the efforts of the Total Kunst co-operative, nomadic independent Aurora, and apt-art galleries Magnifitat and Wuthering Heights into a grassroots manifesto.

At Total Kunst, Michael Mulvihill's apocalyptic series of drawings "End of the World" were accompanied by Amy Marlette's solo show " A Wee Bit Far" featuring a painting on Venetian blinds. This cataclysmic divination was bolstered by "Kunstnachte", two nights of cabaret-style performance, the highlight of which was Simon Clark's Sad, Sad Songs of Wretchedness and Death performed from a black cardboard coffin. The dystopic-psychotic atmosphere was echoed in Magnifitat's "Brainchild" wherein Lucy Stein's ceiling mural Ad Lucem, an ode to Courtney Love painted in make-up, held court over Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan's mysterious Thinkthingamajig and Jonathan Owen's castrated postcard Casanova.

At Aurora , Jenny Stephens' vector-based urbanscapes on ruled paper contrasted sprucely with Tommy Grace 's delicate watercolours of archways and pastoral follies. At The Embassy's Repro Tableau the spotlight was on baroque, perfomative reconstructions. Lucy McKenzie's drawings of Brian Ferry relaxing at home in his mid '80s neo-Regency penthouse were intriguingly complimented by The London Institute of 'Pataphysics' Department of Reconstructive Archaeology's (DORA) reconstructions of paintings by 'Anthony Hancock' from the classic aspirational comedy The Rebel (1961).  Chris Burden's fantastically droll film of his classic early '70s performances and TV works were given a pagan twist when accompanied by Lali Chetwynd's pasta Celtic jewelery workshop. The spirit of the Edinburgh Annuale was best encapsulated by DORA's Magnus Irvin on his bike remaking Hancock's' Aphrodite at the Waterhole (on the horizontal)- art action painting, part performance, part play acting, and a rollercoaster ride for the paint soaked audience."

Neil Mulholland