Sorcha Dallas

VISUAL ART VENTIAN MINDS

Selective memory is homecoming, a chance for Scottish viewers to engage with the works presented on their behalf at the Venice Biennale. This show is much more than that though, Rather than simply corral a group of strong artists working in Scotland- and Alex Pollard, Cathy Wilkes and Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan are certainly that- the curating team of Jason E Bowman and Rachel Bradley chose to focus on a shared methodology. ‘The reason why we selected the practices we chose to work with was that each of them has a very specific relationship to how they understand, motivate and challenge their own dynamics towards visual languages,’ says Bowman. This grouping works wonderfully, but it also backfires.

Tatham and O’Sullivan’s stock-in-trade is the manipulation of a concise vocabulary of images, allusions and resonant phrases, always re-positioning, sidestepping and skewing that which they present. They have not, however, been very selective in their remembering here. Their exhibit muddles together past works, a sort of visual glossolalia, a tourettic repetition of past practice. Of course, this might be the point, with Tatham and O’Sullivan serving, once again, as the sand in the Vaseline of contemporary art- but the art heap forces a re-evaluation: these are empty attempts to irritate.

After that, the studied, self-reflexivity of Alex Pollard is a blessed relief. Pollard makes work that examines his own practice, and the very business of making art, casting brushes, pencils, and rulers and lending them a little life. In ‘Figures,’ a punch is thrown by a man made of sculpted pencils. In ‘Wall Drawing,’ hands made of rulers make marks across the whole gallery. ‘Beast’- a dinosaur with ruler-limbs parades across parodies of museum display tables. Pollard’s taste for the absurd seeks to remind us of the absurdity of making art, his eyebrow raised at his own reflection.

And so to Cathy Wilkes, an artist whose greatness- and that is the right word- rests in part on the impossibility of describing, analysing or understanding her work. To list the elements that make up the installation here is almost an affront to their wholeness. There are mannequins with paintings for faces, a television, a tank filled with fluid, flower petals, batteries, broken bowls and doll parts. Wilkes’ allusions are also elusive, a private matter between artist and viewer, one best left unvoiced. Which leads us to ‘Most Woman Never Experience,’ Wilkes’ move into video. The soundtrack fades whenever lips move, allowing a succession of domestic scenes to unfold, unhindered by the interpretability of unspoken language- a child falters at the top of the stairs, a pregnant woman moves about the house and, again, we are left aware that Wilkes wants us to see these images, now, knowing only that they are connected.

Wilkes’ work- much more than Tatham and O’Sullivan’s blowsy poses, even more than Pollard’s assured, amused essay on the making of art- rewards the potential risk the curators took in grouping artists according to their development of closed vocabularies: hers is an artistic language that cannot be understood, attracting and repulsing in equal measure, but one that offers great reward to those that attempt in vain to understand it.