Sorcha Dallas

A graduate of Glasgow School of Art on 1991, Craig Mulholland has continued to live in his native city and to work from a studio in King Street. He is undeniably one of Scotland’s most prolific artists, producing painting, sculpture and DV animations/films. Two recent and outstanding solo exhibitions in Glasgow (‘Plastic Casino’ in May 2004 and ‘Bearer on Demand’ in January 2005) have consolidated Mulholland’s reputation, highlighting not only the quality of the work he produces but also the range of artistic, literary and historical sources he skillfully employs.

‘Plastic Casino’ took place in two locations: the pristine gallery space of Sorcha Dallas and a large, semi-derelict warehouse off King Street; ‘Bearer on Demand was located on King Street itself, in artist-run Transmission Gallery. That both shows were held in the heart of Glasgow’s Merchant City, and focused around King Street, is important: in the 18th and 19th centuries the area was the administrative, mercantile, commercial and cultural heart of the city, and a vibrant forum for public meetings. During the latter part of the 20th century, a cumber of the defunct warehouses on King Street were turned into artists’ studios, and galleries such as Transmission and Street Level Photoworks found a home along the same stretch of pavement. Now, the street is subject to a corporate and lottery funded redevelopment programme: its status as Glasgow’s ‘cultural quarter’ will be articulated through process of refurbishment, a means by which the regeneration of the area – and its increasing acceptability to those who buy its numerous loft apartments – can be confirmed. It’s an urban regeneration cliché: artists move in and gentrification follows.

By simultaneously inhabiting both the warehouse and the white cube, ‘Plastic Casino’ negotiated a territory between site of production and site of cultural regeneration and display. Mulholland has spoken of his interest in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project initiated in 1927 and ongoing until Benjamin’s death in 1940. Importantly, Benjamin’s subject was not simply the Parisian shopping arcades themselves, or the politics and economics that surround them, but history itself. Similarly, Mulholland’s work is typified by a direct engagement with its own history: the paintings, sculptures and animation/film in ‘Plastic Casino’ tackle head-on a range of sources from Constructivism and Suprematism, through to De Stijl and Pop. In Bearer on Demand’, housed within Transmission’s appropriately vault-like basement, commerce was examined within an ominous space, heavy with references to vampires and gothic fiction. The etched metal paintings produced for the show (resembling banknote printing plates) and the animation/film, which referred to scenes typical of those featured on the notes themselves, brought into question once more the idea of art at the service of economy. Mulholland’s work fully deserves the positive attention it has received in the past year and forthcoming shows are not to be missed.