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Press 33Selected Essays and Reviews |
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Steep Annuale Growth at the Fringes Susan Mansfield 23 Aug '05 Every gallery in Edinburgh pulls the stops out in August. Last year, for the first time, the main city galleries publicised their shows under the banner of the Art Festival. Not to be outdone, the artist-run initiatives got together under their own banner, The Annuale. The title was ironic, a good humoured nod towards the great Biennials of the contemporary art world. But the Annuale has gone from strength to strength and has returned this year with an elegant printed programme and its own website, taking in a month of exhibitions performance events, film screenings and publication launches. So the official Art Festival has its own thriving fringe. The grassroots feel of last year's Annuale has taken on a new professionalism thanks to the growing strength of artist-run organizations such as the Embassy. Total Kunst, based at the Forest Café in Bristo Place , has this year had a rotating programme of artists in its gallery space, often built around or including performances. Glasgow-based site specific group Emerged are occupying vacant shop fronts in the St James Centre in Leith Street (until August 28 th ). This year Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop at Newhaven is joining in, with Magazine , an exhibition of ESW members and others(until 27 August), including four invited artists form Dundee 's artist-run Generator Projects. The whole building has become a gallery space, with artworks displayed amongst the machinery. Though a wide range of media are represented, some of the most interesting work is in sculpture. Lara Greene has built an elegant machine in which two guests operating twig-like levers can encourage two sculpted figures into a film star kiss. Scott Laverie and Colin Parker have built an immense wooden construction, somewhere between a tower and a garden sheds, inside which it is possible to catch glimpses of the workshop of Scotland 's Enlightenment pioneers. Other works are as small as this is large. Jackie McNamee's Small Dangerous Objects is a series of tint sculptures of everyday things- microwave ovens, TVs, mobile phones- labelled according to emissions of microwaves. Elain Allison's Little Precious Things stores buttons, screws and seashells- tiny objects of everyday preciousness- in small wooden reliquaries. Another Annuale newcomer is One Zero Project, curated by Benjamin Fallon at 10 Northumberland Street (until 25 August). He has brought together a small group of young artist, including three picked from this year's Edinburgh College of Art degree show: Mark Doyle, who paints intricate photorealist objects in enamel paint; Lilah Fowler showing work which supported her degree show sculpture of compacted soil; and Vicky Grat, a former auxiliary nurse, fascinated by all things medical, past and present. Other highlights include Glasgow-based Becky Sik, working in an intimate scale with wood, paint and light bulbs, and Sarah Beattie Smith, who maps and models her personal landscape in intriguingly beautiful ways. Her Landscape Self Portrait is a fantastical island created from wood and installed above a mirror so that we can also reach the contours within. The Embassy show Teaming (until 4 th September), is a selection of works made by pairs or teams of artists, including John Mullen and Lee O'Connor and Lucy Stein and Jo Robertson. The Radical Software Group have produced a circle of computer continually starting up, like a conversation at a dinner party that never quite gets off the ground, and a DVD tribute to 1980s video game hackers. Perhaps most interesting though is the inclusion of the video documentation of Oh What a Lovely Whore, an event organized by Mark and Joan Boyle in 1965. Having invited their guests to the ICA for a special performance event, they then announced that they would need to make their own entertainment, but provided lights, musical instruments and a selection of props. Chaos ensued as the crowd danced, jumped on trampolines and smashed a piano. As well as being considerably more daring that anything we would attempt today, it is a genuine exploration into the questions raised by group art works. Susan Mansfield |
