Sorcha Dallas

The idea of the artist’s colony is one we gallery-goers can easily understand, even if the art produced there is not always accessible. It’s an idea we actually seem to like: a colony is like a hive, after all, and hives imply industry and graft. Are we then secretly accepting of the notion that artists aren’t really an indolent bunch who lie around all day moaning about funding? Perhaps.

For curators, the colony becomes a useful framing device too. It allows them to show us Ben Nicholson’s abstracts, say, or Monet’s waterlilies, or Edward Hornel’s portraits against the wider backgrounds of St Ives, Giverny and Kirkcudbright, the respective artistic communities in which they flourished.

Open Field plays on both those traditions- the curatorial and the artistic – by presenting the work of a dozen or so artists who have spent time on a dairy farm near the Campsie Hills. For the sake of easy nomenclature, let’s call it The Caravan Club, after the accommodation provided.

It was founded in 2006 by Sarah Kenchington, Belinda Gilbert Scott and Katy Dove and is, in curator Francis McKee’s words, “an organic and spontaneous phenomenon” that emerged casually with little thought to anything other than “cheaper living and a slower pace of life, with fewer distractions”.

Setting the scene are Richard Gilbert Scott’s watercolour studies of the site itself – very straight – and Kenchington’s pointedly eccentric In My Box, a horse box crammed with musical instruments. There’s a tuba with water pipes attached, a large bicycle-operated double fretboard with drums studded with wingnuts. The mechanical orchestra will feature in a series of Saturday matinee performances I December and January.

Providing levity is Ben Craven’s Untitled, a kinetic sculpture you raise yourself which flip-flops back to a prone position. It makes a pleasant ratchety sound as it does so. Elsewhere, Belinda Gilbert Scott’s abstract paintings almost seem like a nod to Monet’s waterlilies, while a soundtrack of sorts is provided by Christopher Dean’s And The Work Is. It consists of two chairs, two scripts and a video showing “Matt” and “Jenny” reading from the same scripts, actually transcriptions of conversations someone else has had about art.

Indolent artists lying around moaning about reviews? Probably, but at least they’ve made interesting work out of it.