Press

Henry Coombes – born in London but resident in Glasgow – is maybe an acquired taste. His work has taken plenty of forms in the past – oil painting, sculpture, cheeky videos posted on his website documenting a twisted, alternative vision of life on Glasgow’s Southside – but Coombes’ central concerns seem to remain the same, no matter what the medium.

Coombes explores the restrictions and boundaries imposed by cultural and political systems. He deals with the inequalities of the rigid class system, though he’s not humourlessly didactic; rather than wear you down with anger, Coombes uses subversive humour and surreal, slightly anarchistic stylings.

Laddy and the Lady, his latest work, is a film commissioned for the massive Tramway 1. Laddy is no CGI wonder but a man in a ragged dog suit, knees frayed and head quizzically cocked to one side. There’s a narrative of sorts here: this golden retriever is unruly, undisciplined, out of control. As The Lady – steely blonde, calculating smile, tweeds: a perfect caricature of the Scottish landed gentry – tries to teach him to be a hunt dog, this causes all sorts of problems on a pheasant shoot.

What makes Laddy and the Lady work is that Coombes is entirely open about what he’s up to. Class and power struggles elide into questions about dominant and submissive roles, the willingness (even the desire) to accept punishment. As Coombes weaves flashbacks of Laddy’s brutal upbringing into the story, you wonder whether he’s satirising the idea of flashback as explanation or simply exposing it uselessness in anything but the most trite stories.