Festival Connections - 179th RSA Annual Exhibition
Festival Connections - 179th RSA Annual Exhibition
The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
13 August-25 September 2005
The Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh has
a particular advantage over the Royal Academy of Arts in London
- its Annual Exhibition coincides with the Edinburgh Festival.
The mostly artist members attended the opening, resplendent in
a fine uniform with decorations that equate with the festive spirit.
This year, the Hanging Committee, which included Will Maclean
(see earlier Studio International coverage of his work)
has moved further forward, reducing the number of exhibits, which
used to be excessive, and providing a clear contemporary sampling
of what is happening north of the border, not just in Edinburgh.
What is also new is the abandonment of one single, cramped 'architecture
room', dispersing the relatively few, but outstanding works throughout
the exhibition.
The architecture, in fact, shines: permeated by
a new awareness of landscape values as an overriding element. The
massive, multivalent tableau by Kathryn Findlay entitled 'Thinking
Fields' seems to set the whole agenda for other architects exhibiting,
now and in the future. Findlay herself has achieved major fame internationally,
but has been drawn back to teach and practise in her native Scotland.
Inspired by an early statement by the New York-based writer and
critic, Rosalind Krauss, entitled, The Originality of the Avant-Garde
and other Modernist Myths, this work embellishes the core of
her creative thinking.
Works by other architects, such as Robin Webster's beautifully positioned
'New House overlooking Shuna Sound, Argyll' and Rick Russell's exhibit
of his new project at Perth for a garden and horticultural centre,
'The Calyx', are masterly; as will be David Page's work for a Maggie's
Centre for Cancer Care at Inverness, superbly landscaped by Charles
Jencks. Back in the city, Richard Murphy's 'Sean Connery Film House'
project is wholly urban in Festival Square, but lacks the wit and
sparkle of Will Alsop's similarly rotund Fourth Grace building close
to the Liverpool Waterfront, a project that has sadly now been cancelled.
On the sculptural front, there is further determined evidence of
a breakout, as Eduardo Paolozzi himself did from this same city.
Gareth Fisher's figure, 'More Armature than Head', has a humanoid
pathos; it turns traditional categories literally on their head,
as in his 'G+G Head', also shown. Doug Cocker's array, 'Eight Horizons',
subtly paraphrases, in finely crafted wood elements, what can be
taken as readings of Scottish coastal landscape form. Jake Harvey's
'Pulse' is a typical work from him, of controlled yet aberrant minimalism.
Certain works by Will Maclean move into mixed media/installation
art, yet his showing this year is relatively modest, reflecting
his active personal contribution to the process of selection and
hanging of the whole exhibition here: 'King of the Summer Isles'
is a superb drawing, which speaks redolently of the artist's Hebridean
roots and evokes their living mythology. Arthur Watson's 'Towards
a Year End Drinking Coat' reminds one powerfully of the celebratory
tendency at Hogmanay, of its joys, its risks, and aftermath. There
is beautiful poetry, too, in Ian Hamilton Finlay's 'Women of the
Revolution' (with Keith Brookwell). This superbly crafted carrying
base for a plant box is overlaid in its detail with a metaphor of
toil, and another floral tribute contained, to the inspiration of
female fertility. There is a moving tribute early in the exhibition
to the late Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, who died in early 2005, with works
in Scottish collections. A minor, but wistful work by his fellow
Italian-Scot, Richard Demarco, 'Two Artists Painting Venice' makes
one wonder who they are. It is also reminiscent of the work by John
Singer Sargent currently on display in the exhibition 'Impressionism
Abroad: Boston and French Painting' at the Royal Academy of Arts
in London. Is this perhaps Demarco's own cue to the next Venice
Biennale, in two years' time? For his thoughts on this year's event,
see his Venice diary on this site.
With the richness of work in painting and sculpture that can be
seen in this RSA exhibition, who can doubt the sound thinking and
planning for a separate Scottish Pavilion at the Venice 2007 Biennale?
As for architecture, Kathryn Findlay must be a natural candidate
for the British Pavilion at next year's Architecture Biennale there.
The Royal Scottish Academy has redeemed itself from past provinciality
and all serious appraisers of contemporary art need now take stock
of the powerful energy, and talented work in new directions that
is currently on show here.
Michael Spens