HICA, Dalcrombie, until 5 June 2011

CURRENTLY showing at The Highland Institute For Contemporary Art (HICA), American artist Richard Roth’s exhibition,Vernacular Modernism, uses a series of everyday objects personal to the artist but universal in nature to open up a conversation around the relationship between local and global values.

The main body of the exhibition is concentrated in the larger lower space of the gallery and predominately consists of a series of domestic paint colour-charts, which, above their aesthetic value, immediately reconcile with the exhibitions title. For me, they also prompted contemplation on personal response to someone else’s choices, as despite the neutrality with which they are presented, it’s difficult to move past the fact that these are private objects that make up part of the artist’s personal history.

The upper area of the space is devoted to a series of wall mounted cosmetic compacts, which again maintain the key theme of the personal and the universal, but for me also acted to expand into the idea of a natural result being achieved through the application of an artificial substance. Upon returning to the paint colour charts, this theme is  maintained with the promotion of the products natural values and results.

Perhaps the most compelling work is a selection of personal documents presented in a large square, ranging from job applications and invoices to medical documents and a questionnaire on emotional response to  9/11. Above the work’s sophisticated compositional value, the core theme is explicitly sustained; however, this work more than the others feels like a self-portrait, intimate in places, offering a personal timeline and opening up deeper channels of identification and reflection.

As with previous exhibitions I have seen at HICA, thanks to the huge bay window looking out over Loch Ruthven, its geographical location becomes an unavoidable part of the works on show; expanding and reinforcing the vernacular theme and setting interesting contextual parameters within which to consider the work and its relationship with the gallery’s immediate surroundings.

Even to a casual consumer of modern art such as myself, HICA offers a deeply rewarding experience. Far from being obfuscatory and exclusive, I find the gallery a stimulating, thought-provoking and inclusive environment, with the owners always on hand to assist visitors to navigate the exhibitions and open up wider conversations around theme and how the work relates directly to its surroundings.

© Alexander Smith, 2011

Links

• HICA
• Richard Roth