Nuts

Nuts.

An Aside, the exhibition curated by Tacita Dean finished on Tuesday. I'd really have liked to have seen it. I wonder if it will end up anywhere else, like the soon-to-be-reopened Arnolfini for example. That would be good. ( I hope the Arnolfini can resurrect its once mutually beneficial relationship with the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. They used to co-publish at one time. At any rate, I've missed this show here in
Edinburgh. I've had a sort of on-off relationship with the Fruitmarket:
as a teenager I used to really love the shows they had here which I
would come to in all naivety with no inkling at all about what was
happening, and maybe a more honest reaction (sometimes I have to
remember to laugh at the funny stuff these days- or maybe it's just not
as funny as it thinks it is). As an art student I used to come and look
at the shows more carefully, trying out my critical claws, and feeling
more detached from the program. I feel that things have drifted more my
way again, now. The last couple of years has seen me try and place work
in their bookshop- unsuccessfully. This rankles with me because the
books produced by some of my contemporaries are there, people I've
shared exhibitions with, people whose work I've reviewed for goodness'
sake. The truth of the matter is that it's a production problem. My
books are made to order, pretty much, and I don't have the
wealth/credit/patience with the byzantine strip-the-willow of arts
funding to finance a larger, cheaper edition in more recognisably trade
materials. I'm not inclined to believe that the quality of my work is
in doubt, and the representation of artists' books there is wide enough
that I don't think I'm offending against a house style too egregiously.
One day- sigh. In the meantime I have books to make, which is the main
thing, even if I end up turning into a sort of Emily Dickinson and
keeping them to myself. I did get to see one of the pictures from An Aside
as the gallery assistants toted it downstairs. It was a landscapey
screenprinty sort of thing in muted greys and greens, sort of like
Sigmar Polke on tranquilisers. I looked up from having a coffee and it
sailed past into the darkness where there was packing and dismantling
going on. One is tempted to look on it as some sort of ominous metaphor
for my fitful imago of a career, but such melancholic entertainments
are probably not a good habit to encourage. I was more successful
seeing some of the other shows I had set out to see.

My memories of Edinburgh's City Art Centre
include two spectacular shows they had there in the 1980s: The Gold of
the Pharaohs and The Emperor's Warriors were massive, blockbuster
things of great prestige that filled the whole building and brought the
whole city filing in. I've not lived in Edinburgh for a long time, and
these exhibitions bask in the rosy glow of childhood recollection, but
I can't recall such shows having been there since. Not that the Centre
has an empty calendar. Far from it. But the shows it has hosted, whilst
of value in their own right, and I'm sure many were excellent, don't
seem to have measured up to the splendour of the Centre's heyday. It
was nice to go back there: it must be five years since I've crossed the
threshold to do anything other than have a cuppa at their excellent
cafe. However, there were three shows here today which held my
attention.

On the lower floors a show about 150 years or so of Scottish Art was
set up, so the place was full of colourists and vaguely arts and
crafts-y Glasgow Style stuff and neatly done Kailyard
bucolic scenes with nifty brushwork. The temptation, almost inevitable
with a show like this is to attempt a generalisation, to try to take a
reading on some sort of national character, whatever that might be.
It's not as absurd as all that, although far more fleeting and
changeable a thing than the sort of lumbering ur-style that lets one
say "The Scots are a dour race of farmers". Whilst this might have
certain useful things to say about Scotland's history and prove a
useful stereotype to deviate from, it's far easier, in this show, to
track the waves of different influences and the emergence of different
schools. Each of these, subtly modified and interpreted in the hands of
individual artists, might tell us something about what was happening
then. To chance a metaphor, looking at this show, we can see a shifting
kaleidoscope (Scottish invention, by the way),
lots of the material is shot through with undercurrents of class
awareness, even sentimentally, and a certain interest in national
identity (though this may reflect the purchasing criteria of the
various public bodies doing the buying more than anything else). It's
difficult to make anything much out from the patterns this kaleidoscope
produces, but one can see certain bits of material floating by
repeatedly.

While I was sitting in the Fruitmarket cafe before this show, I was
looking around me and seeing various books blaring their titles at me,
including one about "New York Architecture". One seems to see New York
everywhere, and sitting at my brushed steel table, sipping a cappuccino
and listening to the be-bop the cafe chaps have put on for our
education and dubious enjoyment, I can see a certain amount of
aspiration to an international style represented by New York here. Paul Gray's show up the road at the Stills
shows how the Heart of Midlothian football ground, Tynecastle, shows
how a place's character can be deliberately swathed in the charmless
but slick high standards of style associated with, say, a football
boardroom or an arty cafe. What would the place be like if it were not
for these universal influences? I don't decry global styles or global
culture outright. I just wish it was a bit easier to modify, a bit less
based on inalterable materials and unhackable structures. The joy of a
universally available technology like printing, for example, is that
itís different in different countries: different technologies,
different inks, different artwork, emerging from the one particular
understanding of the technology that arises in that one place. Can one
imagine a national style of computer operating system emerging? But
perhaps itís too early to tell. Maybe different people will see fit to
use the new tools the new styles, the availability of blond wood and
brushed steel to do their own thing. Meanwhile, the same sort of
espresso machine on this countertop continues to multiply across the
face of the earth.

On another floor of the Art Centre, an exhibition about the new
Bibliotheca Alexandrina was doing its thing. I was disappointed in
this, essentially a large corporate display with the expected custom
display stands and promotional videos. The building itself had
something to say, and this exhibit is primarily one about the
architectural design of the place. As to the history of the library of
Alexandria and their aspirations for the future, only the most tired
and anaemic trot through the past and future is possible with this sort
of exhibition ( a couple of art objects commissioned for the building
are trapped in amber, entirely ineffectual). The new library itself is
a sort of giant tilted circular tablet, bout the proportions of an
extra strong mint 200m wide and tilted at an angle of about 15 degrees.
The circumference that sticks up as a result is one huge wall, which is
covered in a gigantic stone relief covered in alphabets and writing
systems from all places and times. This is just about the only
interesting or informative thing in the show. A shame, really. Finding
out about the struggle for the library's emerging identity might have
been fascinating, but one can see the deadening swathes of corporate
homogenaeity falling in great drifts over the project. However,
libraries at least have the virtue of being purpose built, and use will
soon batter the place into some sort of character.

More about Looking Both Ways, One For All and Hateball later.