Emma Hart: BANGER at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

The Fruitmarket Gallery is one of my favourite galleries. I rarely leave disappointed, whether that be due to the reliably top class exhibitions or the excellent range of art and culture publications available in the shop. Located right next to Edinburgh Waverley train station, it is often my first point of call on any trip up to the Scottish capital. My recent visit was no exception. 

I had no prior knowledge of the work of Emma Hart, and this made for an excellent treat. I was immediately attracted visually to the sculptural installation that greeted me in the downstairs gallery. 

"The exhibition presents two bodies of work that represent the most recent developments in her artistic practice: Mamma Mia! (2017), a major installation made following a residency in Italy awarded as part of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women that Hart won in 2016; and a group of new sculptures collectively titled BANGER (2018) made since Mamma Mia! and in response both to it and to the space of The Fruitmarket Gallery.

Mamma Mia! (2017), consists of ten large ceramic objects which hang from the ceiling, while an eleventh lies sidelong on the floor. The objects simultaneously resemble heads, upturned measuring jugs and lamps. They are glossy and monochrome, and project large speech bubbles onto the floor, some of them periodically sliced through by the shadows of ceiling fans made of oversized cutlery. As you move around and under the forms you become aware that the interior of each is a riot of intensely coloured, highly inventive pattern. The patterns used, ranging from the violent to the humorous, suggest the cyclical nature of anxieties and addictions, as well as the habitual repetitions of everyday life.

  

Upstairs in BANGER, viewers are faced with Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They Aren’t After You. Headlights in a rear-view mirror, the work has you projecting forward and looking back, thinking about what’s behind you before you turn left into the rest of the space. And when you do turn, you find yourself face to face with the first in a series of four double-sided sculptures, car windscreens that stand, like road signs, around the gallery. On one side – the outside – you see into the inside of a car. On the other – the inside – you look out to the outside. The sculptures are made from handmade ceramic tiles, closely tessellated in such a way that the same shapes make different images on each side.



The four major sculptures, Green Light, Give Way, Wipe Out and X, are joined by others that direct and affect how you navigate the space – peering at and under the car bonnet of Fix Up; standing square onto the steering wheels of Race You to the Bottom; moving past Gatecrasher, both a safety barrier and a drawing of a car that seems to have crashed into the gallery wall; and tracking the movement of the woman of Wind Down as she winds herself face first down into the gutter and receives a splash in the face.

Throughout the gallery, visual and verbal puns bring things together and apart, both simplifying and complicating your looking as you ’get’ – or maybe struggle to get – the idea. Multiple ways of looking at each sculpture emerge the more you look. This shift in viewpoints plays out in the dual meaning of words like viewpoint and perspective, which are both about actual processes of looking and also about one’s worldview."

I was fascinated to discover that Mamma Mia! is the result of a residency in Italy in which she had "access to lessons about the Milan Systems Approach, a systemic and constructivist method of family therapy at the Scuola Mara Selvini Palazzoli which involves physical re-enactments and the study of repeated actions. The body of work is the culmination of an investigation into pattern, from visual patterns to patterns of psychological behaviour. The work also looks at the design and rupture of pattern and the ruminations in between."

http://www.emmahart.info/HartBanger2018.html

http://www.emmahart.info/

https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/press/max-mara-art-prize-women-emma-hart/

Jacqueline Donachie - Right here among them at The Fruitmarket Gallery

I fondly remember the artist talk that Jackie Donachie delivered to the Environmental Art students at Glasgow School of Art. I was in the second year of my undergraduate degree, and was really taken by the social aspect of Jackie's work and the way in which she goes about making work.

I specifically recall her telling us about how she struggled to make work immediately after graduating. She explained that after going to Art School, she needed to earn some money and so worked in a bar. It was while working at the bar that she created Advice Bar (1995), "a makeshift bar manned by the artist, who gave out drinks in exchange for problems, for which she would offer advice." It has since existed in many versions. For the Fruitmarket exhibition the gallery has been developed into Advice Bar (Expanded for the Times) (2017), a long concrete bar which cuts intrusively through the lower gallery. I enjoy the way that Donachie adapts the work according to the context. It seems particularly relevant that we have an opportunity and space to discuss problems given the current political and social state of the world. 

Also in the downstairs gallery, Temple of Jackie (2011), is another work that I was familiar with in a previous iteration. The adapted camping trailer was used to serve soup and drinks at the opening of the Glasgow Sculpture Studios when they relocated to Kelvinhaugh Street. I was working at Glasgow Sculpture Studios at the time, and so was involved in the set-up of this installation. The trailer has also been used "to screen films, as a DJ booth (as here), as part of the impromptu, socially engaged part of her practice. The Temple will be used for several events throughout the course of the exhibition."

Upstairs, the work took a slightly different slant. Through my knowledge of Donachie's work, I was aware that she has being investigating myotonic dystrophy, an inherited muscular degenerative disorder that affects several members of Donachie’s family, but not the artist herself. "In the video, Pose Work for Sisters (2016), shown upstairs, Donachie and her sister, Susan, pose before the camera in homage to Bruce McLean’s Pose Work for Plinths (1971). The sisters interact with the props in different ways, striking complementary poses that require various amounts of flexibility, balance and strength. Though the family resemblance can be seen, a disparity in the physical capabilities of the women becomes apparent."

The monitor showing Pose Work for Sisters (2016) is placed upon In the End Times (2017), a steel ramped platform that has been powder-coated dark grey. This non-slip surface is often used for stairs, walkways and ramps, and for the floors of trucks, trailers and ferries.

 
In the End Times (2017) has the appearance of an item of 'urban furniture', as do other works such as Walk With Me (2017), a green line of aluminium tubing that cuts through the gallery and acts as a drawing in space. 

The large drawings of lampposts and CCTV cameras on poles belong to Glimmer (2013–), an ongoing series. In the context of the other work, I became aware of the fragility of the structures, how they lean and can take on quite human-like stances.

 

It was fascinating to see such a range of new and old work made by Donachie. I enjoyed the more sculptural, material-focused aspects of her work alongside the more socially engaged event-based part of her practice. At the root of all the work there is an underlying interest in how individuals exist in the world, things that unite us, and things that distance us from others. There is a sense of trying to find a way of existing within society.

'A lot can happen in fifteen minutes' is now available at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh

My text, 'A lot can happen in fifteen minutes', published in collaboration with UnstapledPress is now available at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. 

We are wanting to increase the number of stockists selling the publication, so let us know if you have any recommendations, suggestions or if you would like to stock the publication, please do let us know.

If you can't get to a stockist, don't worry, they are available to purchase online from here:

http://www.unstapledpress.bigcartel.com/product/a-lot-can-happen-in-fifteen-minutes

Damián Ortega at The Fruitmarket Gallery

The current exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh left me a little underwhelmed. For an artist who is known as "one of the most prominent artists of the new Mexican generation" I found the work to be rather unoriginal and dated.

"The works in the exhibition are predominantly made from clay, the most elemental of materials. Ortega uses clay to form waves, sculpt icebergs and to track the eroding power of a river on a sequence of plains made from brick."

  

The hanging clay blobs reminded me vaguely of Rosie Hughes-Jones' degree show exhibition at Glasgow School of Art in 2008, but without the amazingly aluring scent that made Rosie's work a real sensory experience. 

It also reminded me of Cornelia Parker's installation 'Cold Dark Matter', but without the sense of action that is so implicit in Parker's installation.

   

Again, the clay forms on the floor could be likened to Anthony Gormley's installation Field, but the scale of Ortega's work did not create the grandeur that Gormley managed to achieve with Field.

For more information about the exhibition visit

http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/

Stan Douglas at The Fruitmarket Gallery

In an exhibition that is predominantly black and white, the abstract series of photographs Corrupt Files introduce an element of colour into the gallery. These are prints of damaged digital image files that have no visual resemblance to their original image, but remain true as data. 

Notions of representation and abstraction are also referred to in The Second Hotel Vancouver and Hogan's Alley. These large images are meticulously researched virtual sets resembling the sites of East and West Vancouver. In order to make them so accurate, Douglas sourced textures from archival and contemporary photographs. The level of detail is emphasised as the viewer is invited to use a torch to shine spotlights onto the photograph, revealing further depth and detail within the images. 

The artist goes further by producing an app called Circa 1948 with which you can explore the exterior and interior of the two sites that the photographs capture. Using the language of a virtual video game, characters from the two neighbourhoods can be directed to guide you around the rooms of the hotel and the gambling dens of the alley.

This exhibition demonstrates the ways in which technology can be an integral part of the artists artwork, and even though the artist may be using the latest technological advancements, it is for reasons pertinent to the work rather than as a gimmick. 

http://fruitmarket.co.uk

Gallery withdraws unpaid installation 'opportunity' in response to protests - a-n article

Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery has responded to widespread criticism from artists and withdrawn an advert for unpaid volunteers to help install a forthcoming exhibition by Glasgow artist Jim Lambie.
BY: CHRIS SHARRATT


http://new.a-n.co.uk/news/single/gallery-withdraws-unpaid-installation-opportunity-in-response-to-artists-protests

Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh has responded to comments from artists and withdrawn what was advertised as an unpaid ‘one-off opportunity’ to install Jim Lambie’s Zobop floor piece at the gallery. The Glasgow artist's solo exhibition, which opens 27 June, is part of the Scotland-wide Generation programme, celebrating the last 25 years of artists’ practice in the country.


A statement sent to a-n from the gallery said: “The Fruitmarket Gallery pays its information assistants, installation teams and all artists working in our learning programmes, the Edinburgh Living Wage or above. In this instance, we thought in good faith that we could offer a one-off short term opportunity that might interest people in our audience who have some free time and are interested in joining in with an installation for a few days.


“We have listened to comments, wholeheartedly support a-n's Paying Artists Campaign, and withdraw the offer. We will use paid installers to install the piece.”


Originally posted on its website and Facebook page on Monday, the advert asked for up to eight people to commit to working a minimum of six days each over a 12-day install period. The volunteers, who were to work a 9-5 day alongside the gallery’s installation staff and artist’s assistants, were offered lunch, an exhibition catalogue and an invite to the show’s private view ‘as a thank you’.


Immediate response


The response on Twitter and Facebook to the advert was immediate. ArtistMorgan Cahn wrote: “I just can’t fathom why Jim and the Fruitmarket wouldn’t want to pay some young artists for this. That would be an excellent opportunity for THEM to put money and knowledge into their community.”


Glasgow artist Janie Nicoll said: “It seems like really bad practice dressed up as an opportunity.” Edinburgh-based artist and lecturer Alan Holligan added: “The immediate problem with these kinds of unpaid opportunities is who is available to take them up. One of the wonderful things about paying people is that it democratizes the opportunity by opening it up to those who cannot afford to work for nothing.”


Artist Kevin Harman, a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art, recalled being paid for installing a Lambie floor piece during his second year at college: “We got paid £6 an hour, it was a good experience, which I wouldn’t have been able to participate in if it was unpaid as I had to earn some dosh to pay for rent, materials, etc…”


Commenting on Twitter, Joanne Tatham said: "Payment for such work sustains artists and the communities now celebrated by the #generation project." Glasgow-based writer and artist Fiona Jardine (@fdjardine) wrote: “This kind of work underscores the Glasgow scene we've heard so much about... Why can't #Generation @fruitmarket support it?”


Asked by a-n to respond to this specific question, the gallery, which is one of Creative Scotland's regularly funded venues with a grant in aid for 2013-14 of £666,600, said: “The Fruitmarket Gallery has received £3,000 from Generation towards our exhibition. This is in addition to our regular funding from Creative Scotland, which is the only regular public funding we receive, and accounts for around 50% of our costs. The rest we raise.


“Our entire existence and programme supports artists and audiences in Scotland and beyond. We are proud to pay the Edinburgh Living Wage or above to all our staff, and entrance to our exhibitions is always free.”


Creative Scotland comment


Asked to comment on the issue of unpaid volunteers, a spokesperson for Creative Scotland said: “Creative Scotland is supportive of the Paying Artists Campaign. This campaign reflects the principle laid out in our 10 Year Plan of encouraging better levels of remuneration for artists, in order to ensure that Scotland is a country where they can live and work and that their contribution to all or lives is recognised.


“Voluntary positions do have an important role to play and can often present genuine opportunities for people to gain valuable experience in the art, screen and creative industries, to learn and to make a contribution on their own terms.


"In parallel to this, we will be working to encourage the organisations that we fund to develop clear policies around volunteering and to ensure that trained, practicing artists and creative practitioners are always paid fairly.”

David Batchelor on grey

In a recent conversation between artist David Batchelor and Andrea Schlieker, curator of Batchelor's current Flatlands exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Batchelor talks about the colour grey.

Batchelor: "There's that great phrase by Wittgenstein:

'Whatever looks luminous does not look grey'.

It is such a fascinating observation. What is it about grey and luminosity? Why is it so hard to think of a bright grey?

I thought I'd make a suite of grey paintings, but grey is so complex. The minute you select a grey and put it next to another grey, it becomes not grey, it becomes slightly greenish, or reddish, or pinkish, or blueish or brownish"

Schlieker: "That's similar to what you said about Robert Ryman's white : his are the most colourful whites"

Batchelor: "White is many, not one. And grey is many, many, many. If you read the thesaurus, synonyms for grey are bland, boring, dull, old, lifeless. Grey gets a really bad press, but read Vincent Van Gogh or Johannes Itten or Gerhard Richer on grey, and it's something else. Grey is as complex as any other colour, but in a way it's the most surprising colour because it's the colour where you least expect surprises."

Artists' BookMarket at The Fruitmarket Gallery

Lots of familiar faces from Glasgow International Artists Bookfair are participating in Artists' BookMarket at The Fruitmarket Gallery this Saturday.

The Fruitmarket Gallery is excited to introduce the third Artists’ BookMarket, this April. The Gallery will transform into a marketplace where you will find unique artists’ books and publications for sale, come face to face with the artists who make them and join in book-making workshops. Stallholders are travelling to the Gallery from far and wide. You’ll find work to interest you from the likes of Switzerland, Canada, London and of course a bit closer to home too.

Free talks, readings and workshops from the stars of artists’ publishing run throughout the day. Sign up in advance for Isabell Buenz’s 11.30am workshop on altered books, come along with a disused paper or hardback book and have fun learning how to fold, cut, tear and transform it into a piece of sculptural art.

Don’t miss the special offer where you will find Fruitmarket Gallery titles at wholesale prices and there’s rare chance to see the Gallery’s full range of limited edition artworks hung for sale. The Fruitmarket Gallery Café will be open throughout serving freshly prepared lunches and cakes to provide sustenance in between browsing outstanding bookworks.

Participants include: Aglu • Artist Book Collective • The Artists Book Group • Book Works • The Caseroom Press • Commingle Press • David Faithfull • ECA Illustration • Electric Bookshop • Essence Press • Fillip Magazine • Hestan Isle Press • Isabell Buenz • James Sharp • Jane Hyslop • Jennifer Pettigrew • Jenny Smith • Kieran Dodds • Laini Christmas • Made by Lara • morning star • Moschatel Press • Natalie McIlroy • Owl and Lion • Pushpin Zines • sine wave peak • Stichill Marigold Press • Tessa Ransford • Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Janssen • Wil Freeborn.


Please find below the programme of free talks, events and workshops happening throughout the day:

11.30 – Isabell Buenz
Paper artist Isabell Buenz leads a workshop on ‘altered books’. Come along with a disused paper or hardback book and have fun learning how to fold, cut, tear and transform it into a piece of sculptural art.

Isabell has lived in Scotland for over 20 years. After teaching photography and expressive arts in Germany and Scotland, she has concentrated on exploring paper for her own artwork. This versatile material is the perfect medium for Isabell’s unique artists’ books, paper sculptures, installations, and her collections of whimsical paper shoes. Over the last few years the artist has investigated altered books, finding it very satisfying to create new treasures from otherwise discarded books.

Book for this free workshop by calling The Fruitmarket Gallery bookshop on 0131 226 8181.

11.45 – Natalie McIlroy
Installation and video artist, Natalie McIlroy, will discuss her recent series of artist booklets titled Archivo Ahora created whilst on residency in Belalcazer, Spain last year. Combining performance, photographic archive material and sculptural elements, the books investigate both the passage and stillness of time. The limited edition of the booklets paired with handmade Spanish leather envelopes will be on sale throughout the day.

12.30pm – Ken Cockburn
Ken Cockburn will read from Snapdragon part of a new series of poetry books from The Caseroom Press called Caseroom Translations. This is the first in a projected series of bilingual publications featuring a selection of the best contemporary poetry from Europe and beyond. Snapdragon features the work of the German poet Arne Rautenberg and features design and illustrations for the covers and end-papers by Jantze Tullett.

1.30 – Tessa Ransford
Tessa will be reading from her publication Don't Mention This to Anyone: Poems and Prose Fragments of a Life in the Punjab. Inspired by the rediscovery of an Urdu phrasebook, Ransford takes the reader on a journey to explore the differences between ‘then’ and ‘now’, linking the reader to a world now lost to most. These poems question what it is to be both British and Indian, drawing on the author’s memories and experiences to celebrate and uncover an ‘Indian’ self. This collection of poems reveals the influences that have been formative over four decades of Tessa Ransford’s writings.

2.15 – Artist Book Collective
The presentation will be a short history of Artist Book Collective and the use of social media to create exhibition opportunities and build relationships between artists.

2.45pm Owl & Lion
Owl and Lion will be running a workshop to make a delightful star book with cut out designs.

Owl & Lion is an artistic endeavour led by Master Bookbinder Isabelle Ting. Bringing together fine binding, hand printing, letter press and teaching, the Owl & Lion has an imaginative identity and skilled craftsmanship that stands apart from factory made goods on the high street.

3.00 – Jenny Smith
Jenny Smith will talk about her new artist book “What is the best advice you have been given?” and the project that inspired it. She will also discuss some of her favourite laser cut artist books, by other contemporary artists.

3.45 – Electric Bookshop
Electric Bookshop brings together people with a common interest in technology, literature, design and publishing to meet and talk about the brave new world of books in the digital age. They'll be telling us what Electric Bookshop is all about, and discussing their Alt-W funded project Pressed For Time, a publishing time-machine, which will provide unexpected and immersive experiences for intrepid book readers.'

4.30 – Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Janssen
Artists Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Janssen have collaborated since 1997 after meeting as participants in the biennial Manifesta1. Their diverse combined practice encompasses publishing, often utilising their own occasional ‘Ed and Ellis Productions’ imprint. The request to talk about the place of publishing within their practice at Artists’ BookMarket prompted them to devise the new publication 'Published Matter: A Talk in 24 Cards’. This publication will be launched at the Artists’ BookMarket for the special price of £19.97.