Sorcha Dallas

Glasgow-based artists Karla Black, Mick Peter and Michael Stumpf walk the philosophical tightrope between the subject/object divide, where every action and though unsettles the foundations of Being and Non-being – the ground under their feet. Artists have examined the separation between self and other since art freed itself from the bonds of magic and its fetishes. ‘Who am I?’ and ‘what is that?’ we ask, and art breeds in the fertile gaps between each postulate.

All three artists in Like It Matter utilize everyday materials to create their work, which helps make he familiar unfamiliar. The resultant sculptures generate stuttering and unsettling narratives that pull you in and then abandon you to irresolution – there doesn’t need to be an ending, happy or otherwise, in art. In the rush to become a ‘healthy’ subject, familiar strategies are employed where the self (you or the artists) tries to differentiate itself from others. Objects that become abject thwart the easy separation, becoming nightmarish, uncanny automatons stuck somewhere between life and death when they turn to look at you. Anthropomorphisation is a clichéd and slightly passé way into this theoretical quagmire, but none of the artists take this easy route.

Karla Black’s previous work has been concerned with making as performance, the debris becoming almost accidental art objects. Materials that are regarded as unimportant become something through being worked (flour, for example) and things that are thrown away come back to haunt us, such as old clothes and half used toiletries. Mick Peter’s work also examines the quotidian but most of the work seems to come from some latent ‘oikomania’ (fear of the home0. Everything becomes weird and unusable – sinks are damned and cassettes suffer from gigantism. Peter’s work relates to the Sherry or Shrigley brand of humour but in this context something darker is likely to emerge. Even in the broad light of day or bathed in the warm electric light of the CCA, Michael Stumpf should conjure an icy shiver. Fairytales and indigo denim wrap around abstract forms leaving everything to the spooked imagination.