Page 56 - Studio International - October1973

attempt to be charming, loses his some of the important things Absolutely incredible. Anyway, Welfare State, Shirley Cameron and
identity. happening in British art today'. Davie shows twenty paintings of Roland Miller and the Natural
Lynton's broad mind came up with a 1970-72, more than half oils, the Theatre. A film of the travels of the
A number of art exhibitions took list of nine and a programme of recent ones being gouaches on paper. Welfare State, a band of happy
place throughout the city as an performance art, making sweet music These unlikeable marks at one time hippies, made jokes.
appendage to the International out of the baroque cacophony of risked something, simple
Festival. 'Objects USA' held at the artistic licence, hoping to prove that misunderstanding. The well- Mark Boyle is similarly pleasurable. I
City of Edinburgh Art Gallery, was 'modern art is not just a thicket of established Davie now looks a little as wonder if there was in the selection
disappointing. Assembled only five problems, interesting to a few people if he is merely feeling himself against some wish to meet the approval of the
years ago by Lee Nordness and Paul and pleasurable to none'. But the the boundaries which he has set up. Liverpool set who received their art
Smith, the works already look dated. simplistic individual introductions One doesn't want Davie to move on, education at the hands of the poets of
This is due not to aculturation, but to seem to be Lynton imagining how art though, just to exercise a little more the sixties ? Boyle freezes those
an apparently undiscriminating eye looks from the other side of a jam energetically within his arena. Ken moments when a pavement or small
that was most impressed by butty. Kiff showed scraps called area of beach becomes a special
decorative, novel, but often empty Psychoanalysis remembered. physical reality rather than remaining
form. The best piece in the exhibit Entry to the show was gained via Mounted in a long glass display case, joined to the rest of physical reality.
was a ceramic Game by Jim Philip Vaughan's room of neon- they brought to mind museum 'finds'. His isomorphic fibreglass facsimiles
Melchert. generated stuff happening in the dark. What mad pursuit ? What struggle to of randomly selected bits of London,
Responsible in collaboration with escape ... ? Poor hounded Kiff. life-size squares of rooftop or roadside,
'Earth Images', an exhibition of Roger Dainton for the Hayward Devils chase him, the big head haunts or squares of rocks and sand from a
ceramic sculpture commissioned Gallery neon tower, Vaughan states him ; food, sex, and other pre- beach in Argyllshire can't say more, or
in cooperation with the Ceramic his interest as being the 'use of solid requisites of living belong, for him, to less, than the Tate's kerbside yellow
Workshop, Edinburgh, was held at three-dimensional things for making a grotesque world. I'm sure that line. The skin series in Liverpool
the Scottish National Gallery of things which are not things'. There Kiff's use of paint is borrowed from means that Boyle has moved on to
Modern Art. This show fell into was a good deal of curved neon and an array of painters who have also skin. This is the nice thing about the
the same trap as the LA County's mirror reflections. It was good to move dipped their brushes into their hearts. art: it shouldn't be, and isn't, going
unfortunate experiments in Art and from light to painted steel, from the The hand-writing is too studied, the anywhere.
Technology exhibition of several lightweight to Phillip King : his Red images too obvious. I found Kiff's
years ago. It serves little purpose to Between in the adjacent compartment ineloquent pouring-out of fantasies The new famous artist Karl Plackman
extract artists from their primary solidly stood for sculpture. It seems to to be simply distasteful. So too with is 'difficult'. He is a master at letting
concerns in order to offer an be a division between two sharply Stuart Brisley, whose corny us know that something is going on
unfamiliar medium and approach. defined moods; if it is possible to crucifixions (with balanced diet and but not letting us in on it except
Many well known artists from define a mood, King does it with his time off for wee-wees) pop up with through the title. His Horizontal Man,
England participated in this forthright articulation of heavy gauge amazing regularity. Leading the the main piece filling one room, is
programme, but few were metal. Two moods can end up as two performance art programme did not made from wood, metal, rope, mirrors,
excited by the works they executed sculptures, but not in this case. The exclude him from a space as one of sand, acroprops, fluorescent lights,
or the promise of future works in ground-based lead-in stage upon the chosen nine. He filled it with slides cardboard, eggshells etc, and all
ceramics. which the divide occurs (in the shape and photographs of previous events things nice. A blue ribbon leads from a
of four upright beams on a slope and his film, twenty minutes of concrete bell mounted on one of two
The American artist Jon Schneler, towards the front) might be taken as cork things to a bulldog clip on a
who has been living in Mallaig, the unifying factor, but this is a first sketchpad-type object, standing at
presented a show of oils and impression. Unity becomes one with the top of one of two runways down
watercolours at the Edinburgh College stability as it is realized that the the room (marked out with strips of
of Art. His landscapes are Rothko-like angular, space-enclosing forms on wood) ; at the end of this is a buffer
abstractions informed of the changing: one side of the fence, and the jumbled which looks as though it smells of
drama of sea and sky. stalks sharing a few open segments creosote. Twelve feet up the wall sits
(like peel of a carefully dealt-with a bathroom mirror. Four boards,
The French government supplied an orange) support one another, are splashed with grey paint, lean at an
exhibition of recent paintings and physically interdependent, yet angle of 60 degrees against the
sculpture which was shown at the touch at just one point. It would opposite wall. Is this a complex
Royal Scottish Academy under the work without a colour. The over-all installation, (or work), or just one
pretentious title 'Permanence de dark red is just to make sure. King's with a lot of things in it ?No distance
l'Art Francaise.' There was much work is impressive. I can't say this too short or too long is put together
academic abstraction and there were about Hubert Dalwood : what with more economy, but that only
no surprises. Outstanding, however, a big boring sculpture I The means that there are fewer elements.
were Cesar's flowing polyester colour, a bathroom wall choice and A photograph of a London one-way
expansions. the wrong one, came a close second street sits above a long leather
to the size of the thing as the dominant watchstrap sits above the Vietnam
Next door, the National Gallery of feature. The near room-size platform War peace-signing photo sits above
Scotland, with its magnificent on which the suggestive-of- that marked polar bears photo : that's
collection quietly offered an asylum traditional-Japanese-architecture (or all. Not too long out of the Royal
from the impermanent and vacuous something) columns, beams, walls, The Minder's Line 1973 College, Plackman is definitely that
and restated the persistent survival of steps, and a bit of grass operated Stuart Brisley, Deborah Sharratt, strange guy with the amazing mind.
quality. together, hindered rather than aided Anna Flanagan A little bit of writing hangs from a coat
Lynn Hershman involvement. A distancing device no Photo : John Mills, Liverpool hanger construction which is really
doubt, but matt red cardboard tubing an archery bow ;'... and there I saw
isn't that holy, even with mysterious Brisley's face entitled Freedom some words that were very bloody
Magic and strong medicine at the brass inlays. through:Work. Brisley is our leading cutting Words ...' balanced on the
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, until representative of the German horror- other side with 'Homer, the master
28 October. The three representatives of modern because-isn't-it- horrible school of builder and rebel against time ...'
'Magic and Strong Medicine', the painting at Liverpool were Alan artists, the school which never makes Lynton's introduction dramatically
Peter Moores Liverpool Project 2, Davie, Paul Huxley, and Ken Kiff, clear what 'it' is. There must be some asks 'where's the art in it?', and
was selected by Norbert Lynton, hardly a challenging selection but point about the human condition amazingly manages to continue 'I
Director of Exhibitions at the Arts more than interesting to see togeber. being made. But Brisley never takes have not at this moment seen
Council. Moores' brief to Lynton, In the context of this show, Davie is us further with his complaints than Plackman's work for this exhibition. I
printed as a preface to the catalogue, a real treasure, and I really can't Brisley. And there one must remain, gather that he has to a substantial
specified the following :'only nine or compete with our host : 'Davie's work while he indulges some self- degree planned it'. I trust that the
ten artists, all British, all active now, most self-evidently fits the title of castigatory quirk. How long will it be work lived up to his expectations. He
but of different age groups : not this exhibition ... (he belongs) to a before we tire of waiting for something was delivered the artistic equivalent
necessarily an exhibition with a mental world somewhere between really nasty to happen to the man ? of a carefully ruffled hairstyle.
message or a line, but a choice of dream and purposeful invention.' Other performances came from The Tony Rothon
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