CLIMBING the stairs at IG:LU the excitement is never being quite sure what you will find on entering the space.

THIS sense of anticipation is heightened on being led into the Insertion Collective’s debut show. Making an appointment for an experience of 20 minutes duration, limited to a maximum of 5 people and being taken to the piece by one of the artists is an intriguing premise, particularly in a city accustomed to more established rules of artistic display and reception. Insertion Collective’s first collaborative work is more of an event than an exhibition, a journey into conceptual territory anchored to tangible elements of sound and image. It is a work to be negotiated rather than viewed, and while some may find the experience obtuse or disorientating at first, the process of reorientation at the core of this work is what makes it powerful, suggesting a very promising creative trajectory for the group.

Section from work by Georgina Porteous

Artists Georgina Porteous, Mark Creaney and Sid Innes have created a site specific work which plays with audience expectation and perception of the mundane. Stripping the space right back and introducing key elements of sound, image and performance, the group have successfully created an experience which the audience insert themselves into. The expectation of the individual in relation to an art space or gallery together with the seek and find compulsion on being directed into a seemingly bare setting, create an uneasy atmosphere of discovery. Two artists like guardians are also part of the work, their presence, suited authority and positioning informing the self directed nature of moving through a corridor and main room intriguingly flanked by closed white doors. Lighting is minimal; two single bulbs in the main space and the lit corridor suggesting pathway to portal.

Expanding throughout the whole space in a loop is the relationship between a compressed projected image seen through a keyhole at the far end of the corridor and sound through a vent under the floor in the main space. Movement between these two elements, separated spatially but brought together in the mind once the visual element is introduced, encourages the viewer to re-evaluate their initial perceptions of sound and meaning on being led into a deceptively empty room. With visual cues to behaviour within a culturally designated space removed, we have to reimagine ourselves.

Photo by Georgina Porteous

The ingenious keyhole viewpoint where a sequence of everyday human action is compressed and redirected into an upward and tunnel-like perspective, subverts expectation of the space behind the door which the viewer is physically unable to enter. Like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole, this disquietingly skewed perspective causes the ground beneath the our feet to feel rather unsteady. This is not a space of certainties but one in which we are forced to grapple with the parameters of the work and our perception of it. It is refreshing to be confronted in such a way by such deceptively minimal elements. In such an environment a myriad of tiny details become apparent; the flow of air onto the surface of your eyeball concentrated in seeing beyond the door, the marks on the floor of age, human movement and habitation, the sounds of the world outside and moments of stillness to be found in an interior space of one’s own.

This is a fascinating and expansive work which bodes well for future Insertion Collective projects and collaborations.

For an appointment call/text the Insertion Collective (07585 547901) or visit the gallery’s webiste (link below). The artists will give a post-exhibition talk at 7pm on the final day of the exhibition, discussing the piece of work and the nature of the Insertion Collective. The session will be followed by a Q&A.

© Georgina Coburn, 2012

Links

• IG:LU

THROUGHOUT 2011 IG:LU has continued to establish itself as one of the city’s most dynamic and engaging venues with an eclectic programme of gigs, films, photography and art exhibitions.

As an alternative exhibition and performance space, IG:LU is a vital addition to the local cultural scene, providing a meeting point for artists of all disciplines and public access to their work. Over the last year exhibitions such as Photoglobal 1 & 2 brought the world to Inverness and Inverness to the world. This global outlook in terms of the region’s ongoing cultural development is essential, coupled with showcasing the work of local artists across an entire spectrum of practice from Graphic to Conceptual art.

Alisa Hughes - A Ship Called Relation

IG:LU’s 25th event is an exciting convergence of established and emerging local artists, including work by Michael Forbes, Shaun MacDonald, Rosie Newman, Richard Maddalena, Alisa Hughes, Henrietta Ludgate, Heidi Soos, Graeme Rodger, Robbie Mackintosh, Nathan Mellis, Gavin Downie, Chris (Simpsons artist), Doo Glow Productions, Tilly Honey, Ladyface and Hollipops.

Climbing the stairs at IG:LU is always a voyage of discovery, and with the latest show the journey begins on the staircase itself with Sea of Emotion (Watch Your Step) by Alisa Hughes. Hughes has created an incredible sense of movement, both physically and emotionally, in the wave-like curvature of her design, which continues over several floors of the building. The fluidity of her deep charcoal and black linear painting in a continuous sweep within the confined structure of the staircase works beautifully, humorously accented with characters and motifs such as a pencil holding onto a paintbrush afloat in the squall, and heart-shaped Jolly Rodgers. A cupboard on the staircase houses another element of the installation in the recorded sound of the ocean and alternative responses; (a) Sink (and join the madness) or (b) Swim, accompanied by a clown mask and yellow inflatable arm bands.

Alisa Hughes - Do You Mind

Stylistically Hughes is a presence immediately felt as positively edgy and ambiguous, qualities that are expanded in her work as part of the main exhibition upstairs. A Ship Called Relation in charcoal and oil pastel reveals the artist’s fine draughtsmanship in a rhythmic expanse of ocean, like a living organism. The title of the work and accompanying sea shanty rhyme suggest the human element grounded within the work. In the absence of human figures the vessel itself becomes the visual symbol of a relationship or the need for “two to make any sense”. The range of mark within the drawing is a union between graphic deliberation and the softness of blended pastel and charcoal handled with great sensitivity. This is exemplified in the contrast between the linear wave design and the treatment of clouds in an oncoming storm in the top right hand corner of the composition.

The artist’s adjacent acrylic on canvas, Do You Mind, feels like a disturbing cinematic still, an intimate invasion of bodily space. The pose and dress of the woman in terms of provocation are inverted by a black and white documentary style palette and the positioning of the body, her mind’s gaze beyond the scene or the viewer. The foreshortening of the body and positioning of her over life sized head, spilling into the foreground and into the space of the viewer, is immediately unsettling- amplified by the presence of a seemingly malevolent clown masked figure between her thighs. The photo realist style of the work contributes to the discomfort of an image which cannot be easily dismissed as simply provocative or shocking due to the dynamics of the composition in unison with the title of the work.

Based in Ullapool, Hughes is an exciting and unexpected find. There is an intelligent mind at work in these images, together with very accomplished technique. It would be wonderful to see the strongest works on display here develop further into a definitive statement, allowing the artist’s unique voice to be resoundingly heard and seen in a solo exhibition.

Michael Forbes - Pretty In Pink

Exhibiting regularly in the UK, USA and Europe, the surreal POP inspired works of Michael Forbes are distinctive for their graphically bold delivery of humour and irony. Angel A exhibits a typically seductive palette of candy bright colours; the Angel of the title, a pin up model in fetishist heels and gold leaf halo, perched on a shiny red armchair with an attendant dog, a black star patch over its eye. There is a thin line between seducing the eye passively with the language of mass media and advertising and interrogating that language in a social context. The two works by Forbes on display represent that essential tension and ambiguity extremely well.

The second work in mixed media, Pretty In Pink, is more critically contemplative in its juxtaposition of an oval format reminiscent of advertising signage, model female profile and three dimensional gun, the entire composition shot up with pink paint. A colour of passivity is fused with an instrument of violence and the presentation of this loaded object turns the visual language of mass consumption in on itself, raising questions in a way that the burlesque style titillation of Angel A does not.

Tilly Honey - Origami Flower Brooches

A series of paintings by Shaun MacDonald offer an extremely timely vision of our age, rendered with the precision of a Dutch or Flemish master. The sequence of ideas in House 2, House Ring and House and Hotel 2 are deliberately and cumulatively stacked one on top of the other in a gratifyingly multi-layered interplay of surface and ideas. MacDonald’s use of empty plastic monopoly pieces convey the nature of the game in an era of financial crisis, while referencing a visual tradition of patronage, documentation of status, property and wealth within the Western Art tradition.

An interrogation of the act of painting, the role of the artist and the painting as object are also manifest in the artist’s almost obsessive rendering of three dimensional objects on a two dimensional surface. The progression of imagery from single house (a tiny green Monopoly piece) to a circular formation of identical green houses, half in shadow and then a pile of upturned hotels and houses in opposing red and green is expansive in scale, turning national obsession/ misguided aspiration into stark reality. The realist style of painting on a relatively intimate scale and sensitive, detailed rendering are both beautiful and uncompromising in their aesthetic. MacDonald’s House series delivers potent social commentary aided by the artist’s visual literacy and advanced technical skill.

It is great to see the work of emerging young artist Gavin Downie exhibited opposite more established artists such as Shaun MacDonald and Michael Forbes. While Downie’s paintings lack the precision and voice of his large scale stream of consciousness ink drawings, his draughtsmanship and confident handling of design in black and white bode well for the future. If the qualities of intuitive design and clarity seen in his drawings can be applied to his engagement with paint handling and composition in acrylics, the results could be outstanding. What is also encouraging is to see in one room a trajectory of creative and professional development visible in the work of artists at different stages of their careers.

Gavin Downie - Extract from Mind Games

Another promising talent can be seen in the work of Robbie Mackintosh. The artist’s fluid and energetic paint handling in Time & Space and his robust gestural treatment of the figure in Illustrator of Grace are the strongest examples. Broadly Expressionist, Mackintosh’s more abstract exploration of pigment, surface and mark in Time & Space in a palette of cool cerulean and cobalt, earthy yellow ochre, umber and red is both delicate and bold. It would be interesting to see a more substantial body of work of increased scale by the artist, drawing on the monumental, sculptural quality of the figurative paintings and the balance of colour, form and mark within this abstract composition. Although the quality of Mackintosh’s work in this show is variable, the artist’s engagement with the human mark and the art of painting has exciting potential.

Rosie Newman was contributed a series of playful and thought-provoking works in her Dada inspired objects and paintings. Tamed imaginatively transforms an everyday hairbrush with flowing locks, freedom and conformity tensely contained within an object of feminine association. Her paintings Bubble – Pink little girls behind the bubble wrap and Praise be to C.O.D – Boy playing PS2 are quietly and effectively subversive.

In Bubble, an image of two little girls absorbed in conversation is obscured by bubble wrap, an interesting comment on the contemporary world in relation to parenting, innocence and perception. The girls are protected from the viewer’s gaze but this also prevents the optimistic colours and essential innocence within the scene from being seen. A blue bird flying in the background is contrasted with a white figure still unformed within a birdcage in the foreground, like an impressionable lump of clay. Cause and effect are implied between the over-protective bubble wrap screen and the experience of growing up in the modern world.

The is subtle tension presented between youth and experience is also at work in C.O.D – Boy playing PS2, encouraging the audience to consider the dynamics within the image more closely. The subdued palette of blues, earthy hessian brown and gold leaf, the protagonist’s monk-like haircut, small aspirational rectangle of gold leaf and ornate gold frame all contribute to the ambiguity between the trance-like activity of gaming in a secular age and an act of religious worship framed in the manner of a historical painting. The only sharp colours in the image are two buttons on the console in orange and red which attract the viewer’s attention, drawing us further into the nature of the boy’s vacant expression. Whilst the image resembles a monk in his cell seeking enlightenment, the image in a contemporary context of an age obsessed with technological upgrades and virtual realties is suitably ambiguous.

Heidi Soos has contributed some lovely examples of her engagement with found materials and the natural world in two framed mixed media works, Secrets. The layering of materials over text and ambiguity of man-made and organic matter contribute to the contemplative nature of the work. Placed within the frame and behind glass we can’t be entirely sure if the yellow ochre leaf or curled bark forms are human bound leather or natural celluloid.

The human mark through stitching is explored further in Memory Dress 1 & 2. On one level these are fantastic examples of bespoke couture, unique pieces which would be at home in the window of a London boutique; however, the artist’s use of materials creates a more enduring dialogue than that of mere fashion or adornment. Aged fabric against white, abstract patterns of stitch, together with accents of vintage embroidery, buttons and textural lace create evocative layers of memory worn on the body. The positioning of a panel of red overlaid with lace across the chest, coloured embroidery on the shoulder and in the image of a bird, evocative of childhood, introduces colour and balance to the whole design.

Memory Dress 2 presents the ingenious transformation of green khaki trousers into an asymmetrical dress, a curious combination of active masculine outdoor associations and feminine intuition. An embroidered panel seems to suggest shifting perspectives of place, a square lawn, heavy drops of blue rain and a tree from green to brown. The memory of a particular day or passage of time is evoked by these symbols, made using deliberately stitched marks, rather than decorative patterns. Observation of detail and the ability to alter perception of everyday found materials characterise the artist’s work and it would be wonderful to see a collection of such pieces as part of a solo exhibition or catwalk show.

In making visible new work outside the mainstream, IG:LU is actively redefining how the city sees itself, providing much needed context and opportunities for potential collaboration in its ongoing engagement with artists at all stages of their careers. The open, friendly atmosphere of the venue and multidisciplinary approach has created an exciting space of infinite creative possibility and discovery, allowing important connections to be made between artists and audiences, local and international. Elsewhere in the city cultural planners should be taking note of the vision, energy and commitment of IG:LU to encourage new talent and provide a platform for emerging and established local artists. The greatest advocacy for the Arts is making them publicly visible, and while a gaping hole still exists in the provision of public art spaces in the city, IG:LU as a small independent venue is an important and very welcome addition to the region’s cultural landscape.

IG:LU Christmas exhibition is open 11am-4.00pm daily until 21st December.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• IG:LU

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

IT IS always a pleasure to climb the stairs to IG:LU for the element of surprise on arrival. Each show allows creative takeover of the space, and Ordnance Cannoneer Detail is no exception. Georgina Porteous’s latest collaborative work with sound designer SiD InneS, occupying two rooms, successfully expands the range of the artist’s practice into exciting new territory.

A spatial artist using mixed media, Georgina Porteous initially studied Television and Sound Studies in Glasgow before completing a BA (Hons) Fine Art Degree at Moray School of Art, Elgin. She has worked as a set designer for The Giant Olive Theatre in Kentish Town in London, and has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows, including the SSA annual exhibition, Dundee and RSA New Contemporaries exhibition in Edinburgh (2009), winning the Blackbox Award from Glasgow Arches in 2010. Currently the artist is working with the Conch (Sound Studio) by Walker and Bromwich as Conch Guardian and Documentor for its 2011 Highland Tour.

Detail from Ordnance Cannoneer

In previous work Porteous has consistently presented the audience with challenges of perception, causing us to question how and what we see through drawings, sculpture, installation and video work. There is always been an element of playful subversion in the artist’s practice, and the way that sound and image are displayed in this latest exhibition distil this quality to an impressive degree.

Often our experience of projected images is essentially passive and fixed; here the relationship between sound and image, together with the space occupied by the viewer takes on an intriguing dynamic, begging further investigation. In the main space at IG:LU the viewer first encounters two opaque glass plates, or screens, suspended facing each other, onto which are projected images from two cameras simultaneously filming both the human action and the destination.

On the first plate a man throws stones while on the second we see a way marker by the sea which he is attempting to hit. Standing between these two images it feels as if the stones are being thrown across the space that the viewer actually inhabits, the sound of each pebble with its metallic reverberation seemingly hitting both the screen and its target of the way marker.

The way that the gallery space has been stripped back, white walls and carpet removed to reveal bare wooden floorboards adds to the sensation and presence of sound. We know what we are seeing/hearing is recorded, yet the spatial relationship between ourselves, the passage of time and changing light on film make the experience actual for the duration of the loop. It’s as if the stones being thrown are hitting our consciousness in a way that makes moving around the projections to investigate them further a compellingly necessity.

Screen shot from the video

The work is characteristically contemplative and provocative, using sound and image to create a new space within the work for the viewer to inhabit. When seen from behind, the opaque glass also mirrors the opposing image, creating multiple layers of space, time and experience, action and aspiration condensed within the same frame. This is a departure for the artist in terms of spatial use of sound as opposed to use of soundtrack in dialogue with a series of images or sculptural objects within an installation, and it is a very exciting sign of evolution, ripe for further development and future collaboration.

The installation in the gallery

The work is immediately playful and deceptively simple, prompting viewer interaction and thought. The natural sound of the wind, waves and pebbles are soothing, allowing the viewer to feel comfortable exploring the installation and the complexity of seeing within it.

The second work is more lyrical in nature, the projected image on the ceiling appearing in its angularity like a shaft of light, into the room but also the mind. Here the way marker is elongated, the texture of the ceiling rendering the image in a beautifully painterly way. Attached to the top, a series of coloured ribbons billow in the wind, and significantly the first view of this work is from the doorway/ threshold.

Changes in colour and light on film are gradual, reflecting the passage of time, until the sign and the ribbons, separating and dancing in the wind, become a silhouette. The white-washed window within this room beckons the viewer with its human symbol (a recurrent motif in Porteous’s work), the head a fish eye peephole onto the world outside. What we expect from this focal window view is clarity, what we get is distortion, only a temporary disappointment because we can discern through this narrow circular opening the coloured ribbons fluttering outside, opaque but still in view.

Within this conceptual space there is engagement with visual language that is ambiguous but also tangible, the artist’s hand present in her signature scratched onto the window surface along with the enigmatic title of the show. The flow of movement and sound in relation to the image in this work is unexpectedly poetic, the emotional effect as potent as the contemplation of human perception that it provokes. There is a sense of quiet hopefulness in this work, in the elusive marks created by the rainbow ribbons held aloft in the filmed image and their elusiveness as real objects hung out of reach and obscured by opaque glass.

These are intelligent and accomplished works by an artist that continues to create captivating and challenging visual work, presented here in an equally engaging space.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• IG:LU
• Georgina Porteous
• Georgina Porteous on Facebook

HOT ON the heels of the ground breaking Photoglobal show, IG:LU has been transformed into a white gallery space by third year honours students of Moray School of Art ; Caroline Inkle, Laura Moon, Gabi Stuckemeier, Ruth Walker, Gabriella Hockney, Ingrid Watt, Andrea Dear, Judith Nicholson, Joan Reed, Heather Brotton, Karen Curran, Anne Hicks and Lynn Barton.

Compello is an exciting and well presented show, utilising all of IG:LU’s spaces to showcase a diverse range of work in photography, film, painting, sculpture, printmaking and installation. The flow of work within divided exhibition spaces is remarkably coherent and gives insight into the vision and creative process of some the North’s promising emerging artists.

Laura Moon and WOW

WOW, an installation in paper by Laura Moon, cascades into the IG:LU main space like a waterfall, spilling onto the floor and into the path of the viewer. Moon’s arrangement of recycled, readily disposable material has a curious rhythm all of its own, a fusion of natural forces, human design and human waste. There is playful deliberation in the use of random minute scraps of paper, discarded en masse and then transformed by the artist into a visible human mark.

The ambiguity of this installation is part of its appeal; a natural phenomenon rendered in refuse, human actions with unnatural consequences and contemplation of man-made environment. Equally this work feels very much like a celebration of discarded found materials recreated in the mind’s eye. The artist’s engagement with materials and the element of mindful play make this an intelligent and enjoyable work.

Accidence of My Morphology

Ruth Walker’s Accidence Of My Morphology (Digital Print & Acrylic on Canvas) is a striking image, printed in reverse negative as if solarised and masking the face of the artist/sitter. This is a fascinating multi-layered image where individual identity is obliterated, pared down to a printed triangle on a sheet of plastic pulled across the face and secured either side by the subject’s own hands. The high contrast black and white, fake wig/ masked disguise and the artifice of the portrait or self portrait which can conceal or reveal, make this an ironic and challenging image of self.

The defacing of one’s own image or of any human face is an act of dualism in creative terms; of deconstruction and reconstruction. Here there is a sense of the artist grappling in quite an uncompromising way with individual and collective identity. The work of Sarah Lucas springs to mind particularly in relation to the individual “dewomanised”.

Accidence Of My Morphology is a powerful image that could have stood alone boarded by a single frame on an even larger scale, or perhaps as part of a series. Framing diffuses what is essentially a confrontational image, taking the more painterly background treatment and extending it to the edges of the frame, broken by ill fitting borders. Care should be taken in future to ensure that the artist’s visual statement is not diminished by the mode of presentation in this way. There is something raw and uncompromising about the image that bodes well in terms of the artist’s future development. This single image like a lot of work in the show gives a taster rather than presenting a definitive body of work.

Joan Reed’s DETALUBOBMOCSID in mixed media presents a series of obvious visual metaphors for the workings and mysteries of the human mind in sculptural form; the clear head of frozen water with electrical circuitry within, a key and metallic jigsaw pieces; symbols of the ultimate puzzle to be unlocked, presented in a Perspex box with transparencies of brain scans printed on the exterior.

It is actually in Reed’s adjacent artist book which she comes into her own. A sketchbook-like photographic record of process, this beautiful series of images contain intricacies and connections more subtle and dynamic than the three dimensional symbols of mind on display in their current form. The interior world of the artist’s book seems more resonant here than external symbols for the mind. If the complexity and delicacy of these mind maps can be translated into the artist’s work in three dimensions, then perhaps a more personal and authentic visualisation of the subject and its inherent mysteries could be realised in sculptural form.

WOW

A triptych of digital prints by Ingrid Watt, Treasury, Nursery and Bedtime evoke a fluid state between childhood memory and dreams. Use of montage and the vintage palette of grainy muted colour, like a seventies family photograph, immediately suggest shifting perception and fleeting human memory. The composition of Bedtime, where the child becomes a composite of plastic and flesh, with movement between different fields and angles of vision is a good example of balanced composition within the frame. These visual elements in terms of narrative possibility would translate well into filmmaking.

Ingrid Watt - Bedtime

Untitled #72 (Photography and Text) by Gabriella Hockney presents an interesting play on word and image; staged with long shadow, heels and a hobby horse, the text isolated in the confines of a pink square; “I am proficient. I never come”. The tension between image, text and viewer expectation is an element that begs further investigation and development. The second image, Untitled #25, this time in colour and without the duality of text, presents another consciously staged image, the stage-lit illusion and reclaimed gold frame wrapped around a circular view of self.

Hockey’s third contribution to the exhibition, a short film “I’m Way Cuter Than You”, is lacking in in the necessary irony to make it of interest to anyone other than its three central protagonists and would have been better shared on Facebook. However there is enough evidence in Hockney’s photographic work of a real talent emerging, a potential for sophisticated treatment of text and image that is challenging, complex and engaging. It will be great to see how this artist’s work evolves and matures in future exhibitions.

Lynn Barton’s Untitled abstract (Oil on board) in steely Prussian blue, grey and cream, intersected by a single line of cadmium red, is an image of bold division and delicate mark; a synthesis of geometric and organic forms in a beautifully balanced composition. Each element in the crafting of the image is finely rendered; paint-handling resembling the erosion of natural processes, retention of delicately drawn marks, use of texture and pattern, all combine in a painting which is considered in its design and accomplished in its varied use of oils. Subtle curves of line are almost suggestive of landscape, bisecting bolder geometric forms of human intervention. This is an intriguing and beautifully handled abstract in which colour, form, line and texture create a strong unified composition.

Compello is a welcome sight in the Highland capital, as a refreshing showcase of exciting and diverse visual work, making Scotland’s most recently established Art College more visible to a wider public and as part of an on going commitment by IG:LU to provide a central space for promising new talent.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• IG:LU
• Moray College

FOLLOWING Christopher Howell’s installation of Instagram photography as part of IG:LU’s inaugural exhibition in December, Inverness’s newest arts venue hosted PhotoGlobal, the world’s first global Instagram exhibition. This was an exciting, innovative show bringing a world of images to the Highland capital and projecting IG:LU to the world.

The exhibition featured the work of 55 invited artists from Japan, Australia, Russia, Brazil, USA, Singapore, Greece, France, Hong Kong, Holland, UK, Denmark and New Zealand, and more, together with images from over 200 Instagrammers selected from over 4000 worldwide submissions to IG:LU’s PhotoGlobal competition. The PhotoGlobal exhibit displayed over 11,000 pictures during the course of the week.

SWEETARTS - Work from PhotoGlobal

Using the iPhone app Instagram to create visual Tweets and as a vehicle for social networking, the technology has attracted an estimated 2 million users world wide. Lives revealed in pictures and shared as part of an expanding network cuts across language barriers and this universality enters a different realm of public exposure in the IG:LU exhibition space. PhotoGlobal represents an intriguing dialogue between the professional and personal, the random and deliberate in the choice, creation and display of Instagram images.

The exhibition consisted of a number of different elements; in the IG:LU main space there was a live feed of single images by 55 invited artists projected 5ft square changing in real time as they were posted. At the end of each day images were printed off and displayed in time zone order around the walls in a continuous stream, leading the viewer through the entire IG:LU space. The dimensions of each individual image, the size of a mobile phone screen, are displayed in sequence of posting and create a wonderful collection of individual visual statements that invite close inspection. Over 1000 prints were mounted during the week.

Images from competition winners have been projected within the main space as part of a 63 image picture grid; this changing matrix is a mesmerising installation of random juxtapositions, a snapshot of “a week in the world as it happens”. In addition through the night projections showing posts from all over the globe are viewable from the street below.

The accumulation of images posted throughout the duration of the exhibition made this a show to be visited multiple times, and the collection of photographs by each invited artist made fascinating viewing. One of the pleasures of seeing this exhibition was the strength of individual statements, immediately defining an artist’s vision, style or obsessions, but equally the delight of seeing a sequence which reveals a sudden flash of inspiration amongst images drawn from everyday life.

CIRKELINE - Work from PhotoGlobal

There are some inspired images in the show, among them works by XXXYXYZ (Brooklyn, USA -5hrs), a series of beautifully observed figures and street scenes with colour layered like an accumulation of graffiti. These images inspire the imagination like a sequence of cinematic stills, creating potential narratives that overlap and separate in the mind of the viewer to weave stories of their own. Treatment of the human subject is particularly compelling in this series; an enigmatic man in white crossing the street or distant figures illuminated in silhouette and framed by upright pillars of black in what feels like a subterranean space read like frames of a moving image.

Equally engaging are series of images by CIRKELINE (Copenhagen, Denmark – 1hr) a stunning series of high definition black and white images, the human figure casting long shadows across an urban landscape and images by THOMAS_K (Berlin, Germany), a combined sequence of sepia and black and white reminiscent of another era. There are many images in the show that could be easily scaled up and command a space of their own as part of a solo exhibition.

The ambiguity of manipulation in relation to the photographic image enters a new realm of debate with the Instagram and other brands of app. Use of filters and manipulation of the image enable an expanded palette, heightening colour and individual elements of the composition which can be used to great effect as part of the overall design. The capacity for new technology to evoke photographic methods of the past; the grainy vintage of a polaroid or the painterly illuminations of an early Box Brownie add layers of interpretation to contemporary images and maintain the essential relationship between the art of photography and human memory. Technology and craft need not be mutually exclusive and the best images in the show achieved a balance between the two.

LUWISPURPUL - Work from PhotoGlobal

A striking series of Instagrams by SKWII (Oulu, Finland +2hrs) combine drawn elements and composite images in a unique way; the sequence as a whole is fantastically varied with a flash of humour in two grinning snowmen dwarfing a house Godzilla style. Other images have the polish of a vogue fashion shoot, a model in black on a stark background of pure geometry is repeated as part of an elegant quartet. An image created by HOTELMOTELHOLIDAYINN (Phoenix, Arizona – 8hrs) a black and white shot of a pumpkin headed scarecrow ripe with texture accented by vivid green and bloody orange, or the arrangement of gummy bears in an image by SWEETARTS (Tokyo, Japan +9hrs), part of a series of vividly coloured close ups, are great examples of compositions delivered with accomplished vision and flair.

Artists such as SILVERBOX in their poetically distilled vision of architectural forms, the beautiful combination of objects and elements of urban life in vivid neon colour by LUWISPURPUL, the minute details of interlocking blossom branches and fence lines by BITMAPMANIA and the disturbing figurative imagery created by MAKISS form an impressive display of work by Tokyo-based artists who combine technology and artistry to the highest level.

While social networking sites are full of millions of snapshots that stimulate little interest to a wider audience, the Instagram, as represented in this show, displays exciting new possibilities not just for connection but for creative expression. Technology might have democratised culture but there remains a vast difference between a hundred wallpaper sunsets tinted benignly with colour and a beautifully composed shot of an object, person or place, previously unseen that makes you want to stop and spend quality time with it and stays with you long after you’ve left the exhibition.

Ultimately it’s the eye of the artist enables us to see; framing the shot and creating the possibility of layers of meaning in league with their technique, whether the tool is an iPhone app, a paintbrush, chisel or video camera. In a world where we are constantly bombarded with a deluge of visual information to be compelled to stop and contemplate the visual in real terms is a welcome pleasure. Thankfully IG:LU as a space facilitates this kind of exchange in playful, dynamic and unexpected ways.

PhotoGlobal is an exhibition of stylistically accomplished visions, memories and singular moments intelligently brought together in a way that engages with the dynamics of accident and design which define this new creative medium. Like the myriad of thoughts and lives that populate the planet, it is impossible to take it all in as part of a singular view, which is precisely what makes it such an engaging show; the viewpoint is constantly changing and the viewer is left wanting to see more of individual artist’s works and their potential engagement with other art forms. The result of an IG:LU collaboration between Rita Farragher, Graham Hanks, Andrew Grant and Christopher Howell, the curatorial approach is as creative as the work it engages with.

The PhotoGlobal exhibition can be viewed online for another week from 14 March, and there plans to develop a permanent PhotoGlobal website. As the fourth event in IG:LU’s history, this is an exciting development in a venue which is rapidly establishing itself as one to watch and revisit; reactive to cutting edge artistry and proactive in its engagement with a global audience.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• PhotoGlobal
• Instagram

BILLED as “a week and a day of alternative creativity” in “Art, Craft, Film, Light and Music”, Event #1 at IG:LU heralds the start of an exciting new creative venue in the heart of the city. Initiated by Graeme Hanks and Rita Farragher, IG:LU is an art space long overdue in an area home to a varied and dynamic range of contemporary Arts practitioners, but lacking a regular platform for public exposure to their work.

IG:LU is a real lightning strike and it is fantastic to see the work of local artists finally being represented in all their diversity in a central and evolving space. Equally important in the city’s cultural landscape is the need for a meeting point for exchange between artists of different disciplines and the opportunity for emerging artists, designers and other creatives to show work alongside their peers, placing that work within a wider context.

Glowing images by Do-Glo Designs from the IG:LU exhibition

The vision of the venue as a fluid, responsive space was certainly in evidence in the opening exhibition and as the host of four evening happenings with music from Teenage Lobotomies, the L.E.D. and Polymath and a closing night event with Le Parade Noir. The welcoming feel of the space, accessible exhibition opening hours between 12.00 and 8pm and a selection of work that transformed the everyday into the unexpected, provided scope for contemplation and presented an alternative view of the region’s creative community; vibrant, uniquely situated and in touch with the world, was instantly refreshing.

This sense of energy and enterprise was palpable in the work of participating artists; Do-Glo Designs, Heidi Soos, Tomassi, Ladyface, Gordon Brown, Graeme Roger and Kevin Reid, TillyHoney, Nigel Sandeman, Mike Dunn, and Mark Creaney, ranging from painting, digital printmaking, graphic and graffiti art, bespoke clothing, jewellery and body adornment, video, Instagram photography and electroluminescent costumes and installation. Whilst there could have been room for more extensive showcasing and presentation, particularly of the fashion and adornment sections of the show, the exhibition justly celebrated individual creativity whetting the appetite for future exhibitions and events under the IG:LU banner.

Christopher Howell’s collection of 72 Instagram images were a highlight of the show and represent the world’s first instagram exhibition (November 2010). Arranged asymmetrically in an inverted triangle in a corner of the main space these photographic images, created using an iPhone app, engage with the latest technology whilst displaying an understanding of the craft of photography and image making comparatively rare in a democratic age of gadgetry.

Chris Howell's Instagram images

Often shared images created as part of networking sites are of little universal interest, relying more on accident for a good composition than any vision in the mind’s eye. What Howell displays here in the presentation of this whole sequence of images is a great eye for balance; of composition, colour, light and shadow. Within this collection each individual image begs closer inspection with the heightened manipulation of colour contributing to the surreal, ethereal quality of each image. Having mourned the demise of the polaroid it was a delight to see the combination of grainy softness and vivid colour, transforming natural light into neon intensity, making a world of everyday objects, landscapes and intimate details such as skin, baby’s feet or hand held composites made extraordinary, meditative and rather beautiful.

The art of photography and human memory are inexplicably entwined and in a world of disposable images, often stored in computers or handsets but seldom actually seen, it was wonderful to feel compelled to spend time absorbing every shot and exploring the imaginative possibilities of the sequence as a whole. The iPhone app enables the user to enhance the image using different effects beyond the instant snapshot. It seems that Howell has embraced this process in a considered fashion; certainly in terms of how he has chosen to exhibit the work, inspiring an intimate human connection to be made directly with the instagram images in the exhibition space. As a vehicle for social, cultural and creative networking the suggestion of an international exhibition of instagram photography at IG:LU is a very exciting prospect, potentially repositioning local work in a global context and inviting the world to IG:LU, Inverness.

Dress by Heidi Soos

Clothing and jewellery made from reclaimed and vintage materials by Heidi Soos has great potential in the world of bespoke couture, however greater care needs to be taken in the presentation of her work to ensure that the level of promotion equals the care and attention to detail of craftsmanship. Soos reminds us in her reworking of everyday materials that imagination can transform the mundane and the manufactured into something unique and beautiful. Her plastic food container bangle (3) bound with fine wire and with an overlap of organic forms is an unexpected gem of transformation.

A reclaimed leather and fabric cuff constructed in exquisite interlinked sections, especially in the fastening, feels as though it was made to adorn someone precious. At her best the artist’s attention to detail, sensitivity in handling of materials and layering of different fabrics are distinctive and inspired. This was also exemplified in two garments on display; the first an asymmetrical design in delicate layers of white and cream vintage lace, tulle and broderie anglaise and the second utilising domestic linens and pearl button detailing with a medieval style binding around the hips.

The combination of unexpected materials such as inner tubes, plastics, found objects and aged fabrics together with the exploration of historical periods of design could certainly be developed further and it would be wonderful to see a more complete showing of Soos’s work (and that of Do-Glo Designs) on live models.

The combination of established and emerging artists in this show was extremely encouraging. Exhibiting for the first time, illustrative work by Hollipop showed potential for further honing of technique and stylistic development. The dreamlike and naïve quality of the artist’s images sits somewhere between illustration and comic art, with the human figure strongly derivative of Japanese manga. Hollipop’s penguin-headed figure holding a narwhal is delightfully quirky, giving an indication of a unique voice yet to be fully realised but ripe for development.

Adjacent to this work, Gordon Robin Brown’s unmistakable visual style is a potent juxtaposition in terms of distillation of an artist’s individual visual language. The first of two large scale untitled paintings in a palette of deep purples and lilac with accents of cool green reveals Brown’s captivating and bizarre vision; a defined graphic style of interlocking verticals of trees and horizontal shadows, a processional of hybrid animal and part human figures through a deep forest blurring the line between the imaginative world of childhood and adult fantasy.

Leaving The Forest (2009), a painting by Gordon Robin Brown (image © Gordon Robin Brown)

This ambiguity, in the fantastical elongated house-headed figures smoking cigarettes, the hint of danger in green snakes suspended mid-air winding through the trees and genital-headed snails creates a highly stylised vision, with Brown’s own iconography ever present in the vertical totemic accumulation of heads. This motif also makes an appearance in his second work, a wonderfully mysterious snow scape handled in a looser more painterly fashion. Set in an expanse of winter landscape, the high horizon and positioning of figures create a dreamlike ambiguity of scale.

A band of faceless hooded figures in yellow overcoats play on an enlarged snowball overlooked by a frozen skull and aged male head atop a monument of snowballs. Brown’s technique and playful, surreal juxtapositions in both these works are immediately engaging to the imagination. Viewing his work is like falling down the rabbit hole into wonderland.

Emerging artist Mike Dunn’s layered and gestural work utilising collaged newsprint and thick paint spatter capture beautifully the pulse of a city in New York Noise; the strong composition of architecture balanced convincingly with the rhythm of the artist’s paint handling. The robust heat and energy of this work in vivid red, white, orange and blue is tempered by the delicacy of the multi-layered surface treatment, inviting closer scrutiny. The accompanying work Good Feeling, whilst not as strong in terms of composition, successfully evokes a neon core of emotion in a progression of white, yellow and red emanating from an abstracted street sign.

Work by Tomassi in the stairwell

Strong work from Tomassi featured both in the stairwell as spray painted graffiti and in a sequence of black and white meticulously cut stencil work of heroes and villains, plays with positive and negative space and association. The positioning of the figures within each composition was consistently dynamic, contributing to the visual impact of the whole sequence.

Graeme Roger and Kevin Reid’s thought provoking, cathartic and humorous video work made in association with students of the University of Memphis featured a series of interviews with individuals constructing and destroying their own monsters. A critique of iconic figures and villains, the ready made style of filming and makeshift construction of effigies of figures such as Martha Stewart, Gumby, Mr Potato Head, Jason from the Friday the 13th franchise of films and King Willie, the major of Memphis, seemed to empower the individual, yet ironically echo the national and popular cultural pastime of blowing the enemy away. The slowed down soundtrack accompanying the destruction of each figure by projectile heightened the comic element of the work, the amplified sound effect reminiscent of Godzilla- banishing these personal monsters whilst asking of the viewer to consider their own.

IG:LU’s first event was an exciting showcase, engaging directly with local arts practitioners and revealing an alternative vision of creativity and creative industry in the Highlands. It will be interesting to see how the space evolves and its arrival on the local arts scene is both extremely welcome and timely. IG:LU is definitely a space to watch and will hopefully become a regular meeting point between artists of all disciplines, local, national and international audiences.

© Georgina Coburn, 2010