Inverness Museum & Art Gallery, until 13 February 2010

CALUM Colvin’s approach to photography typically engages with the crafting of illusions by both the eye and the lens. The artist’s complex method of construction employing three-dimensional sets, photography and points of contoured convergence in painting naturally present the viewer with a challenging range of visual text.

Natural Magick, Calum Colvin, 2008.

His work with stereoscopic imaging in the last five years has resulted in an exhibition that actively explores the act of seeing. Inspired by the work of Sir David Brewster and his Letters on Natural Magic addressed to Sir Walter Scott in 1832, the exhibition reflects a period of profound change in the history of early photography and optical devices mirrored in the current age of digital invention.

Colvin’s exploration of visual perception can be seen as a form of cultural cartography. The artist references the work of Brewster (inventor of the lenticular stereoscope and the kaleidoscope, and an instrumental figure in the introduction of photography in Scotland), together with portraits of Charles Wheatstone, Robert Burns and Lord Byron in a spirit of expansive cultural redefinition.

We are presented with “prism(s) of perception” rather than portraiture, exemplified by the artist’s Portrait of Robert Burns. The iconic nature of the subject and its inherent sense of nationalism are presented not in absolutes but in an arrangement of images and mirrors that expose the artifice of seeing. We are given an ambivalent truth about perception and identity, the movement of the viewer around the work creating multiple entry points or potential readings.

The arrangement of two easels/images facing each other with a freestanding mirrored box construction in the middle allow us to perceive ourselves, and at a central point of convergence the image of the poet is made whole within the trinity. There is an implied relationship here between the nature of stereoscopic vision, the introduction of a slightly different image to each eye in convergence allowing the perception of three-dimensional space and the traditional narrative function of a triptych in painting.

The human search for truth through religion, science or art is at the core of the composition and the artist’s technique. What we “see” is ironically a fiction, our perception of heightened depth of field and perspective, a construct. Layering of media in two and three dimensions together with the surreal morphing between imagined space and real or tangible objects creates a dynamic field of identification, rather than the instant comfort of recognition we usually experience when viewing the portrait of a national figure. Viewed independently, each image within Portrait of Robert Burns is composed of a myriad of objects and surfaces which, like the relationship between works within the exhibition, presents endless narrative possibilities.

The artist’s investigation of history and cultural identity presents an interesting context for his own image as artist/creator. His self portrait Natural Macgick is a fascinating example. This image (like the accompanying wall works) only comes to life in its depth and complexity when viewed through 3D glasses. The spatially and metaphorically layered image of the artist, his studio and tools are rendered in painterly and scientific terms, an exercise in optical illusion and aesthetics.

His hand frames his eye within another frame, the triangle in his hand combined with the back supports of a canvas, a visual identification with the Saltire and antiquity. The portrait bust flanked by two classical columns positions the artist within the cultural historiography of the “Athens of The North”. The recurrent motif of the ladder in Colvin’s portraits as a reference to intellectual enlightenment also contextualises the creative individual within a lineage of scientific and artistic thought.

There are times when the self-consciousness or visible contrivance of Colvin’s art can leave the viewer rather cold, appealing overwhelmingly to the intellect rather than to the emotions. While the technical construction of these works cleverly and convincingly engages with the thematic trajectory of this body of work, they are so visibly calculated that it is impossible to be actually moved by any of them. The investigation is predominantly intellectual, based on specific knowledge; objects are steeped in implied meaning based on the convergence of fields of thought – in effect you need tinted spectacles to extract intended meaning from the work.

There is something detached and academic in the execution that is compelling and perceptive but fundamentally institutionalised. The technique of visible illusion gives the appearance of the artist as an agent of critical, deconstructive thought while creating a canonised image of Colvin within a particular cultural framework, a contradiction fully in keeping with the nature of his practice.

There is great pleasure in the shadow play of works such as Hand/Rabbit, in which the drawn mark has equal voice with the artist’s use of technology, and in the brilliant apparatus of works such as his Portrait of Robert Burns or Portrait of Lord Byron. G, O, D offers the viewer the ultimate triptych with its luminous colour perception and shifting iridescence presented within the certainty of grid-locked perception and the recognition of large clearly defined letters – a contradiction of truth and perception distilled into three.

Colvin’s methodology, exposing the depth of an image via its construction, operates in counterpoint to the daily blur of readily accessible images in daily 21st century life. It restores the idea of coherent meaning, cultural identification and visual literacy in relation to Visual Art, with decoding the image the primary activity for the audience. The appeal of Natural Magic lies in its intellectualised aesthetic perfected in the artist’s signature style.

© Georgina Coburn, 2010

Links

• Calum Colvin
• IMAG