Press

Glasgow International

Cuarted by Glasgow’s Francis McKee, the inaugural Glasgow International incorporated an eclectic array of the city’s venues, from Mexico’s Jumex Collection at the gargantuan Tramway to Tobias Buche and Nick Evans’ show at tenement gallery Mary Mary. Some canonized internationals, such as Barbra Kruger, were debuting in Glasgow alongside a sampler of international group shows. On the whole, however, the late planning of GI meant taking what you might find in Glasgow on an average week (no bad thing) and dubbing it for the visually impaired. Just as Londoners have become adept at capitalizing upon the Frieze Art Fair with parasitical opportunism, Glasgow artists have sought to steal the GI limelight. The difference here was that they were all invited to the party. It’s difficult to imagine another city practicing such trickle-down cultural engineering. The international visibility of cities (over states) may be the prevailing logic here, but for once it hasn’t been greater than the drive towards pan-Scottish cooperation. Sadly, moves from Glasgow City Council to extend the scope of GI to include Edinburgh have been rejected by the capital in favor of developing the rival Edinburgh Visual Arts Festival during the International Festivals season this August. At WASPS studios, Laurence Elliot brought together a number of ex-New Contemporaries in a sprawling cacophony titled ‘The last Chickens of Sainsbury.’ Some of Glasgow’s kunst camaraderie intertwined with the fog of GI PR here and elsewhere. Elliott’s jamboree of irascibles was last glimpsed at The Chateau in the Gorbals, an organization called up by the GI Joe draft to arrange the opening party. At Intermedia, Chateau Stalwart Rob Mitchell presented Blender – Proposal for a Meeting Point. Four huge revolving doors framed with a circle of chairs turned the gallery into a hazardous obstacle course for aspiring networkers. Seated guests found their peer group continually shifting as the doors revolved millimeters in front of grazed knees.

A revolving wall also starred in Smith/Stuart’s nearby installation in an empty warehouse of the kind patronized by Scooby Doo. A précis of all the clichés of ‘disturbing’ installation ever installed, Mete want a span (2005) narrowly pipped Monica Sosnowsky’s M10, which safely transported to a slightly more politicized non-space, a Communist-era modular Polish housing unit. ‘When The Sun Goes Down’, Glasgow Print Studio’s superlative exhibition of Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Hell tableau and sinister children’s book illustrations, was gatecrashed by Douglas Gordon who brought along a party pack of felt tip pens to black-up his hand. Good and evil indeed.

Luckily Car Stereo Parkway, a feverish, idiosyncratic spectacle slipped on a banana skin by New York artist Rachel Harrison at Transmission threw down a glittery gauntlet. Bursting with haptic assemblages, but the installation was stitched together with bunting that jauntily held it back from the brink of collapse. In one corner, under an enormous pile of crisp packet boxes, a trashy pair of leather platform boots comically protruded. All of this was accompanied by silent footage of masked glam rockers KISS in concert faking it as unconvincingly as Harrison’s playful hybrids.

Glasgow International boasted its share of off-site projects by Kruger (Central Station), EmergeD (Glasgow Subway), Craig Mulholland (High Court) and Stephen Hurrel (Mitchell Library). The most beguiling, perhaps, was Alex Frost’s Maverick (2005), a gigantic self-portrait head staring wistfully towards the skies. The mosaic monument to contemplation was abandoned in a patch of waste-ground, imprisoned against unconscientious assault by wire fences and security guards.