IG:LU, Inverness, until 6 October 2011

ORIGINALLY hosted by Capital Skatepark Group and the Spectrum Centre, this latest exhibition at IG:LU features the work of seven local artists; Robbie MacIntosh, Nathan Mellis, James King, Hollie McNeil, Gwenaelle Joubert, Faith Lockett and Duncan Clarke.

It is exciting to see the range and potential of this work being showcased in the Highland capital, part of IG:LU’s ongoing commitment to providing a space for creative exchange and opportunities for the exhibition of emerging work.

Duncan Clarke Morning Light Love

Duncan Clarke’s work in digital photography demonstrates an accomplished eye for composition combined with handwritten text. Morning Light Love is an excellent example, the curve of a woman’s legs beautifully framed in an intimate moment of contemplation. The view is seemingly her own, transposed into the mind’s eye of the viewer; her slightly out of focus hand and fingertips in the foreground resting on the edge of a red skirt, a subtle hint of emotionally weighted colour counterbalanced by the greenish ground of negative space which convincingly holds the composition.

Strength of form and design are lovingly realised in the photographic image; crisp morning light defining the curve of the subject’s thigh and calf, the words write about love written on the serpentine profile of her sole. The colours are subdued and dreamlike like a moment of awakening remembrance, the edges of the print blackened and slightly out of kilter with the physical frame.

Detail from Morning Light Love

While an image like Lifted undoubtedly has commercial appeal, it exhibits an extremely sensitive and insightful attitude to the subject, cleverly subverting the visual grammar of advertising and conveying Clarke’s distinct voice as an image maker in collaboration with the subject. Here the female nude is absorbed in her own thoughts rather than simply being a traditional object of a male gaze or an impossible icon of beauty. The handwritten words; “It’s your imperfections that make you beautiful and your perfections that make me love you” are not just personal sentiment but realised in the actual composition.

The camera is positioned in such a way as to maintain the interior focus of the subject, in spite of traditions of display in relation to the female body. There is also a very interesting relationship to time captured on film; in the movement of the water behind and around the subject, the split tonality of ocean and rock and the stillness of beads of water on her back; creating a moment frozen in time but equally acknowledging the fleeting nature of human existence. There is a real feeling of love in how the image is crafted, “an ever fixed mark” in an ever changing world.

Plastic Hearts, accompanied within the frame by handwritten notebook pages of poetry or song lyrics, is also a beautifully balanced composition, the shadows on the wall forming a tonal triptych. The positioning of the female subject, seated on the street beneath a wall of graffiti, her profile turned towards the shadow, echoes the sentiment of the text; providing a raw edge of interpretation to the immediate lyricism of the twilight image.

The presence and repetition of the words “write about love” at the base of the wall feel like a tag or mantra for the artist/photographer. Clarke’s adjacent images on discarded skate boards in pen and acrylic, particularly Black Dog, with its free flowing design like a stream of consciousness, are extremely interesting when seen in relation to the photographic work. Monogamy is less successful, clumsy both in terms of text and drawing, although use of the found object as a rhythmic surface for painting and drawing is certainly ripe for further development.

Text and image are also explored by Faith Lockett in a wonderful suite of photographic images on foam board which combine everyday scenes with interior dialogue. On The Brink is a good example, a view of feet standing in a puddle, a shadowy image of self reflected in anticipation with the words:
“On the brink
Hesitate, step back
I don’t know, I just don’t know
Eyes closed, breathe, breathe,
Jump”

This collection of images reads like an artist sketchbook, with the viewer having an immediate sense of the point of view of the artist/ protagonist, but equally a sense of the universality of human experience, of the uncertainty and vulnerability that punctuates our everyday lives. The sense of emerging voices in this show is one of its most compelling elements and in Lockett’s work the ability of the artist to shift perception of the everyday is a skill which is certainly ripe for future development.

In Freedom is Sweet we are presented with a focused view of an urban wall, the rusted hand railing suggesting the ascent of a staircase, physically and metaphorically, fragments of posters now blank, providing no signage to guide us. Alongside this image the words:

Freedom is sweet
Nearly there, steady me
Almost there,
Freedom is sweet

The written element informs the reading of a familiar scene, one which we may pass everyday but never pause to contemplate. Lockett encourages the viewer to stop, reconsider the moment and our place within it.

Drawings by Nathan Mellis in combinations of pen, pro marker and watercolour convey the isolation of the individual and the morality of consumerism in his images of the city reimagined. Clockwork feels like part of a storyboard narrative, a single stop frame of animation; particularly in relation to the drawn mark. Spiral movement is suggested in the wind-up humanoid and isolated office windows drawn and bound in circular motion. Secrets in its depiction of a lone figure standing on a cliff surveying an island city; an empty heart shaped space at the centre of the human form, also feels part of a larger tale. The themes of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis immediately spring to mind and it will be interesting to see how Mellis’s work continues to develop through still or moving image, potentially expanding in terms of scale.

Gwenaelle Joubert - O mirror where art thou?

Gwenaelle Joubert’s photographic work also exhibits great potential, although care should be taken given the influence of popular art forms such as photography, cinema, fairy tales and graphic novels on her work that her visual grammar doesn’t become too derivative. It will be extremely interesting to see how core themes of “female identity, sexuality, time and space” will be developed in future work as she continues to distil her own language.

An image such as O Mirror Where Art Thou?, part Snow White Queen, part 1940’s Film Noir, is cleverly composed, utilising low level directional lighting to create a shadowy doppelganger emerging behind a peroxide blonde starlet, cornered in a bathtub and dressed in a period gown of envious green. The staged photography of artists such as Cindy Sherman, the meaning of costume and notions of female beauty all come into play; however Joubert’s own take on proceedings remains obscured in this image. We see a mirror of techniques used in cinematography and visual strategies to interrogate the meaning of femininity, but the visual navigation through this territory is a little too familiar.

Similarly Little Red In The City reads like a cinematic still, a modern Red Riding Hood in a shadowy cold green tiled underpass, her head turned against a wall, steadying herself, the associative glow of a red light emanating from the low left of the image. Dressed in a red negligee she is exposed and vulnerable in the woods of a menacing nocturnal/urban setting. Youth and experience get a narrative outing here, and although well composed within the frame, there is a feeling of déjà vu rather than a distilled visual statement by the artist.

In Cloud Atlas #2 Joubert offers a tantalising glimpse of a different way of seeing in a more surreal overlay of imagery. Curiously this little gem is hung low – you have to crouch to view it in the gallery space; however, the kneeling woman viewed from behind, hair vertically aflame and with emergent butterfly wings, has the kind of mythic spirit and intimate scale of a Blake. There is a step away from the artifice of staging into a more imaginative realm, and it will be very interesting to see how these two dynamics might combine in future work.

Resoundingly this is an exciting show leaving the viewer wanting to see more. The presentation of varied alternative work within a network of independent art spaces is an essential element in the cultural scene of any city. The opportunity for emerging artists to exhibit and refine their work within a wider context is further encouraged by this process and it is an absolute pleasure to see the work of these seven artists at various stages of development.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• IG:LU