Glasgow International Highlights
We’ve reached that time again where my grey and great city becomes a port of portals: brimming with international exhibitions ready to transport viewers to various times, lands and lives. I’ve spent the last few days traversing these liminal spaces, and here are my favourite finds at Glasgow International Festival.
TOBACCO FLOWER, JIMMY ROBERT, Hunterian Art Gallery
Jimmy Robert combines archival material, personal memory and political contexts to deliver a stunning rumination of the exhibition's titular theme. The title 'Tobacco Flower' stems from a relatively-unknown series of work by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and through Robert's combination of resources, this flower acts as a motif that traces the contours of the colonial relationship between the Caribbean and Scotland.
A video work, titled 'a Davidoff cigar at Casa de Campo, 2021' shows the artist's mother enjoying a cigar on her porch, an intimate portrait, a rejection of patriarchy, a quiet moment. On the Hunterian stairwell leading up to the exhibition, we hear her recite poetry.
Smoke stains emanate from 'untitled (belladonna)', an archival inkjet print of the flower in question. Indeed, the beauty of this exhibition is the way that it embodies the sensuality of smoking, the smell, the stains, the horror and glamour. By extrapolating this small motif of the flower, so many larger, important points are made about post-colonial identities, gender relations, and more.
Tobacco Flower by Jimmy Robert
Peak Times by Eva Rothschild
PEAK TIMES, EVA ROTHSCHILD, The Modern Institute, Aird’s Lane
Irish artist Eva Rothschild’s exhibition ‘Peak Times’ takes over The Modern Institute on Aird’s Lane. Her sculptures and wall works pay homage to 20th century movements and ideologies, most notably 1960s minimalism. Works like ‘Tranquility Now’ embody the physical trope of differing perspective, whereby the viewer is able to walk 360 around the sculpture and see both through it and around it, in situ. ‘Tranquility Now’ is also my favourite example of Rothschild’s compelling use of black with its inky drips that hang from the painted steel rods. A colour usually symbolic of negation, here black highlights form instead. In the wall-works made of wax resist and dyed wax calico, it creates dense puzzles of architectural forms that require active investigation from the viewer. ‘Stigmata’, a bronze sculpture that shows a hand protruding from the wall, seemingly holding up a sculpture of six balancing squares, is my favourite work in the room in it's combination of natural form: the human hand, and a more abstract, architectural form. Rothschild's work left me squinting, leaning closer, quietly pondering. Definitely food for thought, and food for form.
MACHINES OF LOVE, JENKIN VAN ZYL, Tramway
Despite considering myself to be made of fairly sturdy stuff, Machines of Love made me feel quite sick - an incredible feat in the digital age of desensitisation. Van Zyl’s use of sound and lighting combined with the gory visuals makes for a mise-en-scene so provocative that the entirety becomes wholly terrifying.
Part snuff-film, part dungeon-tour, elements of fetish abound within the film which is shown in a disused airplane environment. Feeling queasy after watching the short film, I stumbled around the back of the airplane seats in search of an exit, where I find an ominous disco ball hanging above an airplane sink, it’s slow rotation pulling me in as the ambient horror show still rings in my ear, those droning and slicing sounds reverberating. If you're after art that quickens the heartbeat, Van Zyl at Tramway has you covered.
Machines of Love by Jenkin Van Zyl
The deep end by Fabric of Society
FABRIC OF SOCIETY, The Deep End
‘Fabric of Society' is a collective of four artists of colour whose group exhibition tackles explorations of textiles and fabric as markers of identity. Rabiya Choudhry’s work tackles the loss of their mother, in touching tribute told by curtains framing a painting that performs as a farewell, reading 'Lets not waste a moment in grief because life is for living / Goodbye Mum.'-Yen Song’s Song Dynasty 000 shows a costume made for five members of the Song family, and in the space, they stand guard over Jasleen Kaur’s 'Vaal Vool' braid rug. I resist the urge to stroke the tattered edges of Raisa Kabir’s hand-tufted carpets that read 'NO PROTECTION'. Stylistically kitschy, and yet mutually personable - this exhibition provides intimate glimpses into these artist's lives, told through textiles.
AN IMMEASURABLE MELODY, MEDICINE FOR A NIGHTMARE, NEP SIDHU, Gallery of Modern Art
In the ornate ground-floor hall of the GoMA, Canadian artist Nep Sidhu’s lush tapestries hang. Divine in scale, thick with fabric and adorned with silver bells that collect on the floor as silent, silver fishes - these tapestries and the stories they contain render this exhibition a must-see.
Informed by Sikh metaphysics, Guru poetry, music (particularly the works of composer Alice Coltrane) and political history, this exhibition performs an epistemic purpose: pointing the viewer into various directions of knowledge. The distressing historical context, most explicit in a sculptural work that haunts the back of the gallery, is coded in the vibrant fabric collages that line the sides of the gallery, slanted podiums showing colourful carcasses and calligraphy.
I leave the room with a reading list, hungry to learn more, eager to decode and decipher.
An immeasurable melody, medicine for a nightmare by Nep Sedhu
Glasgow international in open physically from Friday 11 - 27th June and digitally until the 31st of July
Words by Cheryl McGregor