Inchmore Gallery, until 29 June 2008

Rebecca Marr - Cloud Chariot

IN THE ABSENCE of established public art spaces in Inverness-shire, the upper gallery at Inchmore is emerging as an interesting space for experimentation, collaboration and cross-disciplinary practice. Whilst this is perhaps unexpected within a commercial gallery, Inchmore is also a working studio with great potential for creative programming.

This latest exhibition features photography from Rebecca Marr, writing from Edinburgh Makar Valerie Gillies (Poet Laureate to the city from 2005-2008) and printmaking by Carol Dunbar. For me it is an exhibition that engages the viewer most through the collaboration of text and photography.

Whilst the overall title of the exhibition, Dewpoint, suggests interpretation on many levels – the saturation temperature of water vapour in air, the point at which this scientific process becomes visible or interpretation of this visual manifestation as symbol – this implied level of multiplicity is not strongly represented by each of the show’s individual elements.

Together, Gillies poetry and Marr’s photographic images work extremely well, whilst sequences of lone photography or screen prints are less convincing components of the exhibition. Marr’s photographs present themselves in a documentary style, in keeping with historical inspiration from Luke Howard’s classification of clouds in the early 1800’s and the pioneering photographic techniques of Anna Atkins.

Atkins’ British Algae: Cynanotype Impressions (1843) was the first book printed by photography and Marr has clearly found inspiration in these early works. The use of the new art form for scientific illustration is coupled with the simple beauty of form in Atkins’ cyanotypes, produced by placing natural materials directly onto light sensitive paper to expose the image.

In Atkins’ day, light sensitive silver salts were used to coat the surface of the paper and UV light acted upon this to create images in ethereal Prussian blue. Without negatives or a camera, objects create shadow and tone through their natural thickness whilst creating a striking negative image.

Atkins’ early development of this technique created images of great delicacy and beauty. Here in a ‘Suite of 12′ hand printed photogram images of different types of seaweed, Marr utilises the technique in more pronounced black and white. The result is like that of an x-ray with the body of plant material illuminated by light.

Another sequence of 12 digital photographs, ‘In honour of ‘Look Cloudward’ by Luke Howard 1772-1864′, extends this idea of classification. Each image is an illustration of types of cloud identified by Howard in the early 19th century and has a soft tonality like that of early silver gelatin prints. While these images are beautiful documents of each cloud type, I found it hard to find a signature here other than homage to the past techniques or methods of classification. Whilst this quality in the work is admirable it isn’t as satisfying as testing the technique or the classification.

In contrast, collaboration of image and text in works such as ‘Cumulonimbus Viga – Orkney, February’ (Digital photograph and painted poem) by Gillies and Marr succeed in interpretation of image, rather than illumination of surfaces or classification through illustration. The arrangement of the text both vertical and horizontal, painted in white and seemingly floating on the glass framed surface blends beautifully with the photographic image.

The combination of words “Hail descending storm” and the visual image activate the viewer’s imagination in a way that cold classification or imitative technique on its own does not. There is also a wonderful natural rhythm in the image of ‘Cirrostratus with Kelvin-Helmholz Wave, Orkney, January’ which is complimented perfectly in the text:

“Curl
Curled are
Curled are the
Curled are their waving crests”

Gradations of tone and rhythm convey a joy in language, image and in the natural world. This translates directly to how this work allows you to feel in a way that a photograph or print on its own may not.

Similarly, Carol Dunbar’s screen prints are fragmentary elements in this exhibition and don’t really share a dialogue with the dominant works of text and photography. The hanging of these small scale prints which punctuate spaces between the larger sequences of work seem out of place.

Dunbar’s ‘Fragment – Dewpoint’ numbered series of screen prints are evocative of the shoreline, reading like natural imprints in cream, blue and white; they float on a white ground like fragments of seaweed encased in foam or found pieces of porcelain. As a sequence however they are repetitive, relieved by the final three; “Fragment – Dewpoint X, XI, and XII” in yellow, orange and ultramarine with a variation of petal or shell-like forms.

Whilst this feels like an exhibition of unequal parts the potential for collaboration between cross disciplinary practices is extremely encouraging as is the presence of the show within a commercial gallery space.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

Links

• Inchmore Gallery