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 edinburgh art festival - part two
Pole to pole.
 david batchelorimage gallery With the Unplugged title making reference to the fact that Dundee-born sculptor David Bachelor is using natural light to colour his work here, rather than his usual artificial sources, this large body of new work must make for one of the most striking first impressions likely to be made at this year's Edinburgh Art Festival. As you enter the gallery, Batchelor's Parapillars unfold before you – a forest of twenty-three iron poles growing upwards from the floor, their "branches" made of accumulated, colour co-ordinated junk. Plastic clothes pegs, kitchen utensils, hairbrushes and assorted clips are fixed to these pillars, sorted into bold blocks of yellow, red, purple, and so on, all bright and gleaming under the exterior light streaming from the windows. It's the painstaking creation of beauty from trash, an aesthetic experiment which succeeds wonderfully. Further smaller sculptures and drawings upstairs meet with similar success, although on far less grand a scale. David Pollock David Batchelor - Unplugged is at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until 29 September 07. The writing's on the wall.  the comic book projectimage gallery Developed from a large book anthology of new works by writers, comedians and artists, the exhibition itself is only a tiny selection of works by some of the artists, and suffers a little from feeling like a bit of an afterthought. In fact some of the works from the book reappear in the show, adapted for the gallery walls. Mel Brimfield's Love Lives Of The Artists: Barbara And Joe is an entertaining and insightful play on the glamorised histories of our idols, whether they be artists, sportsmen or movie stars. Though beautifully redrawn for the exhibition, it is the book version that remains strongest in form and narrative. Brian Dewan's translation from printed page to hand-painted rolls of film (or perhaps the other way around), is somewhat more successful. Using timing and narrative it reminds us that the book is much more of a time-based medium like film. However, Adam Dant's intriguing drawing, Your Tomorrow Better Call, expands a linear narrative into an epic grid. Oddly sinister scenarios develop in permutations that finally result in classical comedy clichés. Shireen Taylor The Comic Book Project is at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, until 15 September 07. Cutting it.  john stezakerimage gallery John Stezaker presents a series of collages, using the simple layering of no more than two images to create works that borrow directly from Surrealism. Occasionally we glimpse a familiar outline of a face (Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth?), obscured by horizons, trees and sky, which open up like a void within these shallow images of familiar strangers. Unfortunately, what could have been an enigmatic selection of works is diluted by the repetition of what is actually a relatively simple idea. However, the resulting images are imbued with a sense of melancholy and, in some cases, beauty, possibly as a result of their romantic source material. The exhibition then moves on to create simple juxtapositions with portraiture of children and animals, and further movie star photographs, cut and layered to look like playing card faces. Unfortunately the sheer mass of these experimentations leads to exhaustion of the idea, only slightly relieved by the only non-collage works, mirrored photographs of landscape or still life, which float like eastern motifs or spiritual imagery. Shireen Taylor John Stezaker is at Stills, Edinburgh, until 28 October 07.  conversations
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related info
 useful linkswww.annuale.org www.trg.ed.ac.uk www.collectivegallery.net www.stills.org
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see also
 edinburgh art fest 07 part one edinburgh art fest 06 part one edinburgh art fest 06 part two rachel whiteread reviewbooks  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. games  games archive Gaming features and weekly columns from 2002 to 2008. |
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