Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, until 8 June 2008

Paper Planes

THIS LATEST show at Eden Court by Georgina Porteous and Mark Creaney is a healthy sign of development of Visual Arts in the area. Both students of Moray College in their final year, their individual works tackle challenging subject matter, demonstrating maturity and insight whilst expanding the parameters of the Eden Court “Gallery” outwards to other parts of the building.

The upper foyers and walls have been utilised in hanging the show as the audience has come to expect. However, works have also been installed to great effect in lofty architectural spaces, including the Bishop’s Palace chapel. For the duration of the exhibition other “tags” by Mark Creaney will be appearing in different parts of the building for audiences to explore.

What is so exciting about this show is the opportunity to see engaging work by artists about to graduate and hopefully continue to build their practices in the North. The development of contemporary art spaces willing to take risks and support challenging work in a professional context will be pivotal in enabling young artists to remain in the area.

Mark Creaney’s work has developed steadily since the 2007 Moray College Degree Exhibition This Way Up, and this new body of work demonstrates evolution in technique and ideas. ‘Paper Planes’ 2008 (Vinyl on compressed foam board) is a bold statement that turns the language of signage and advertising in on itself.

Creaney’s interventionist, sculptural and wall works are very much about human engagement and consistently challenge the audience to think about our relationship with the everyday. The consumption of image and what this signifies is an important line of enquiry in his work. Very much in the Pop Art tradition but moving beyond it, the alternating sequence of paper planes is an unexpectedly emotive piece, the promise of each crisp aspiration or desire crumpled in the neighbouring image, unable to take flight.

Alternating bright colours move the eye in rapid sequence, as in life where we are presented with the next bright shiny thing to grab our attention, only to lose it again with the next image. The repetition of image here is used to great effect suggesting a cycle of human behaviour. Human potential and aspiration is at the heart of this work, deconstructing a dominant language of mass media and advertising.

The chequer-board effect of these images and bright colours present the planes in a playful way, but as signifiers they are unsettling, even poignant. There is a sense in which Creaney’s work reclaims visual language as a tool for greater awareness rather than compliance and conformity. What the artist describes as an image of “expectations and effects the real world has on our dreams”, is articulated extremely well by this sequence of signs. The visual language of our modern consumerist culture is subverted to present a different way of seeing, actively encourage us to think and perhaps more importantly to feel.

‘Tags – Receiving’ (Vinyl) extends this idea, presenting a collective of blank billboards that read like a collective of human figures in bright pink and silver vinyl. Seen together these screens are an ironic image of belonging. Images are constantly fed to us about who we should be, what we should wear, eat, what brand of car or mobile phone to buy.

‘Wait For Further Instructions’ (Vinyl on reclaimed signage) is a striking piece that reads like a collaged ransom note rendered slickly in the manner of advertising. This work successfully raises the question of how “would we be able to function without” instruction? The manner of presentation of the text is justifiably iconoclastic and the question posed incredibly apt.

‘Change’ 2008 is a disturbing and important work in this series, not due to the form of brightly coloured explosives with a second left on the counter, but because of the questions it raises. In our current climate of terror we bring a collective sense of fear to our reading of the image, but equally this piece can represent (as the title suggests) positive change; the explosion of an idea, a new state of being.

It also implies responsibility, “how the decisions we make affect us and everything around us”. The image of a weapon here hasn’t been used to shock but intelligently to perhaps suggest that we are accountable as human beings for what we create.

Looking at this work felt like an act of having to actively extract oneself from the media fuelled received meaning of the bomb to arrive at an alternative understanding of that image as signifier. It is as much about the act of seeing as the perceived subject and asserts quite powerfully our potential to imagine a different reality and to effect real change in the world.

For me the image subverts the destructive impact of the subject because it places human thought at the centre of the image both in terms of the artist’s creative process and how the image is received by the viewer. The artist takes control of the object and enables us to see it differently. The crisp candy like appearance of the bomb is deceptively simple but ultimately as complex as the artist’s technique of working with layers of hand cut thin vinyl sheets.

‘Never Enough’, a sequence of black and white syringes on a pink magenta ground, is an ambiguous image. The sense in which we are never satisfied nor can we ever be satisfied by the material world is suggested along with the inevitable negative association of addiction. A syringe can equally be used to administer medicine, yet we immediately make a moral judgement.

This sequence of images also encourages us to examine how we receive meaning and the root of our assumptions about what we see. The depth to which the act of seeing and the function of language is being explored in this series shows great promise. Creaney also sites work out of doors as part of his practice and it will be interesting to see this aspect of his work develop further in the future.

Georgina Porteous created a number of works in 2007 as part of the This Way Up Degree show at Moray College and the SNH exhibition Multiply curated by Dalziel & Scullion. This is an opportunity for Eden Court audiences to see a selection of these works in various locations throughout the building, together with large scale wall drawings in the first floor theatre foyer.

Although the sculptural pieces were not created specifically for the site, they work remarkably well in dialogue with the architecture. ‘Untitled’ (8 ft suspended vinyl sphere with white perspex chandelier) displays circular feminine forms against the dark angular atrium and polished granite panels of the interior. In the Bishop’s Palace, ‘Untitled’ (3m high inflatable sphere with speculum chandelier) draws our eye into the Neo-Gothic ceiling framing the pure white of the suspended sculpture.

Viewing this piece in the late afternoon light the negative associations with the chandelier’s components, instruments of gynaecological examination, are beautifully transformed by the light. Beauty and ugliness coexist in this piece in a way that makes us question the validity of those judgements. The use and display of artefacts in the space which was used as a training facility for nurses in the 1940’s adds another twist to the reception of the work on this particular site.

Quietly displayed in an adjacent alcove a diamante-studded speculum appears to be a coy reference to Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull. Displayed in this manner it becomes the antithesis of what that gratuitous piece of celebrity art represents.

A sense of transformation of personal experience or trauma through creative process permeates the artist’s work, and her balloon forms seen throughout this series take on an aspirational, poetic quality. ‘Untitled 3,4′ (large scale wall drawings in pen) with it’s naïve drawing style depicts a progression of human figures. Read left to right the sequence begins with foetal images released from the central body and then set at liberty by the final figure in the form of a balloon.

There is something deeply personal but equally elusive being shared with the audience and this is an intriguing mix. The way in which Porteous places objects together out of their usual context in an edgy and at times surreal way, enable the viewer to bring their own experience and imaginings into play with the work. There is child-like energy in the streamer-like parallel pen lines drawn fluidly in gay colours that transforms challenging subject matter. The vulnerability of the human figure is at the heart of how the piece has been drawn and the artistic process that created it.

Also on show on the preview evening was ‘Commode’ (Commode with projection from bedside cabinet), an installation of medical equipment and hospital furniture with a projection of the artist diving underwater in the central basin in pure liquefied blue. Angled mirrors also projected the image onto the low entrance to the outer portico of the building.

This installation, the poem displayed adjacent and the open circle of the wall drawing are linked, each one acting like a space our mind and imagination can step into. The artist’s use of found objects, projection, automatic drawing and writing is an arresting combination which is intended to encourage the viewer to respond to the work on their own terms.

Familiarity and association with objects is consistently tested in the artist’s work, but resoundingly the feeling is a movement from darkness to light. This emotive response is unexpected in the configuration, the work is subtle and elusive, it doesn’t reveal itself in its entirety or attempt to instantly shock, but slowly creeps up on you.

‘Untitled 4′ (icd screen, short film in a 1m x1m ladysign) is a poignant piece with drifting cloud projected into the hollow belly space of a female symbol, the kind we see on toilet doors. The moving vision appears contained within the hard outline of the symbol’s black silhouetted form. There is a sense of confinement in the framing of this moving image that is distinctly uncomfortable, even though it is delivered via a familiar seemingly benign symbol.

The lady symbols are a recurrent motif in several works, rendered in easily reproducible clear and opaque plastic. ‘Snowglobe’ (Snowglobe on Plinth) created for the SNH Multiply show actively develops the idea of the prototype. Inside a squirrel foetus presents an image of childlike conditioning in relation to the “good” Red species and the “bad” Grey. It is an object that functions on many levels: “her snow globe places the tiny foetus of the squirrel (its genealogy not yet detectable for us to judge) in the dreamy fluids of another place…a world perhaps where children have no knowledge of the squirrel either red or grey”.

Although each artist is unique, qualities of aspiration and potential are common to both. This is a provocative exhibition that invites contemplation and reflection. It is refreshing to see work of this kind being exhibited in a central space in the Highland capital and although the role of Eden Court in the promotion of contemporary art has still to be defined, this is a step in the right direction in terms of expanding the parameters of the “gallery” space. Both artists will be exhibiting work as part of their graduating show at Moray College in June and I look forward to seeing their latest body of work.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

Links

• Eden Court Theatre