collective gallery, 10 december 2010 – 6 february 2011
The second instalment of Collective’s New Work Scotland Programme, features Glaswegian painter Nicolas Party and recent Edinburgh College of Art graduate Catherine Payton. Both artists produce site-specific pieces, which function in radically different ways. Party draws directly onto the gallery wall, surrounding it with disconcertingly bright blue and orange painted stripes. A decidedly formalist approach, the artist adopts different genres, referencing art history and parodying outdated art forms in order to interrogate the language of painting. This rather over-invested approach jars with the subtle and intuitive way in which Payton appears to have produced her elements of the show.
Catherine Payton’s installation has autobiographical roots but it expands far beyond them. Her starting point is a screenplay that she adapts from Martin Heald’s ‘Destiny: One Man’s Journey through Death, Life and Rebirth’ Payton’s script lies on a wooden table surrounded by props. A severed arm lies discarded on the floor, a video set of the artist clumsily tap dancing around the barren space loops, and from behind a locked door a flock of birds chirp endlessly. An incongruous mixture of sounds, images and objects, the scene remains inaccessible if one does not refer to her script.
This exhibition is neither immediate nor easy. Time must be invested in appreciating the eccentricity of Nicolas Party’s colour palette, and the obscurity of Catherine Payton’s story telling. Both artists entangle themselves in the bizarre possibilities that site-specific work can offer, they simply demand a similar effort from the viewer.
published in edinburgh journal, sat 22nd january
www.journal-online.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment